Artificial Intelligence In Robotics

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in robotics refers to intelligent algorithms that are

programmed into robot controllers. The concept of intelligence here is relative and
depends on an individual's perspective.

Philosophers have been trying to understand two fundamental questions for thousands
of years: how the human mind works, and can non-human entities think? To this day,
there is no definitive answer to these questions. The definition of intelligence used to
measure human thinking abilities has always been an intriguing topic because
intelligence assessment is conducted by humans themselves. However, humans still
hope to transfer human intelligence to machines.

In the literature, Alan Turing is considered a pioneer in the development of AI. Turing, a
British mathematician, began his scientific career in the early 1930s. In 1937, he wrote
a paper on the concept of a universal machine. During World War II, he was involved in
the creation of Enigma, a German military encryption machine. After the war, Turing
developed automated computing machines and was recognized as the creator of the
first computer program to play chess, which was later developed and played on the
Manchester University Computer. His work, known as the Turing Machine, still has
applications today. Some of his predictions about the future development of
computers also proved to be true, such as his prediction that computers would be able
to converse with humans in the 2000s. Although the term "artificial intelligence" was
not found in his work, researchers unanimously recognize Turing as the first person to
develop artificial intelligence.

Scientifically, the term "artificial intelligence" was first introduced by Warren

McCulloch, a philosopher and medical expert from Columbia University, and Walter
Pitts, a young mathematician, in 1943. They proposed the theory of artificial neural
networks (ANN), in which each neuron can be in a binary state of "ON" and "OFF." They
conducted experiments to theoretically stimulate these neuron models in the
laboratory. From these experiments, they demonstrated that the proposed neural
network model had similarities to the Turing Machine, and any computational function
could be solved through the modeled neural network.

Although they succeeded in developing applications, further experiments revealed that

the "ON-OFF" model in the ANN they proposed was not accurate. In fact, neurons have
highly nonlinear characteristics and are not limited to the "ON-OFF" state in their
activities. However, McCulloch is also known as the second person after Turing who
dedicated himself to the field of artificial intelligence and intelligent machine
engineering. The development of ANN experienced a decline in the 1970s but regained
interest in the mid-1980s.

Another famous method in artificial intelligence besides ANN is Fuzzy Logic (FL). While
ANN is based on understanding the biological workings of the human brain (from the
inside), FL represents the external manifestation of human thinking. While ANN is
based on theoretical biological models, FL is based on pragmatic practical models. FL is
a representation of human thinking logic expressed in linguistic form.

The first scientific study on human thinking logic was published by Lukasiewicz, a
philosopher, around the 1930s. He proposed several mathematical representations of
the fuzziness of logic when humans express judgments about height, age, and
temperature. If classical logic only expresses 1 or 0, yes or no, Lukasiewicz attempted to
develop statements by introducing a truth value factor between 0 and 1.

In 1965, Lotfi Zadeh, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, USA,

published a famous paper called "Fuzzy Sets." Current research on FL and fuzzy systems
in artificial intelligence often refers to Zadeh's paper as its foundation. Zadeh
successfully explained FL with relatively easy-to-understand mathematical and visual
statements. Due to its relevance to control systems (Zadeh was a professor in electrical
engineering), the concept of FL has been widely developed in the context of computer
programming.

Another evolving method in artificial intelligence is genetic algorithms (GA), which are
known as evolutionary computation (EC) in computer programming. The concept of EC
was first introduced by Holland in 1975. Holland proposed GA-based programming
inspired by Darwin's theory. Essentially, nature, like humans, has natural adaptive and
learning abilities without needing to be explicitly stated. In other words, nature
naturally selects good chromosomes. Like ANN, the field of GA experienced a dormant
period before many researchers refocused on EC theory.

GA essentially consists of two mechanisms: encoding and evaluation. Davis published a

paper in 1991 that included several encoding methods. In different literature, it is
known that no encoding method can solve all problems with the same optimal results.
However, many researchers currently use bit string methods in EC studies.

The use of artificial intelligence in controllers aims to achieve controllers that possess
intelligent dynamic properties. Classical control methods such as P, I, D control, or their
combinations cannot adapt to changes in system dynamics during operation because
theoretically, the P, I, and D parameters only provide optimal control effects under the
same system conditions when these parameters are determined. These classical
control methods are considered non-intelligent because they have not been able to
accommodate nonlinear properties or dynamic changes, both in the robot system itself
and in changes in load or environmental disturbances.

There is a lot of research on making P, I, and D control methods dynamic, such as

adaptive control. However, here we will only discuss engineering approaches to make
control systems intelligent through popular artificial intelligence approaches such as
ANN, FL, and EC or GA.
The scheme of artificial intelligence used directly as a controller in a robot system. In
other applications, artificial intelligence can also be used to assist in the identification
process of robot system models, environment or disturbance models, robot task
models such as trajectory planning, and so on. In this case, the concept of artificial
intelligence is not used directly in the controller but indirectly.