Abstract
News editors obtained the following quote from the background information suppli ed by the inventors: “Robots are in widespread use throughout industry, performi ng an ever-increasing variety of tasks. Although many robots are task-specific, having been designed to execute a particular set of actions in a single manufact uring environment, more versatile robots capable of many tasks have become commo n. Programming a general-purpose robot to perform a particular set of actions is often a tedious process. The user must somehow communicate to the robot the int ent of the task (e.g., pick up this object at this location and place it at a go al location) and the task constraints (e.g., don’t hit anything in the workspace ). Such task-specific programming can be painstaking and applies only to a speci fic configuration of the robot and workspace. If the workspace changes, the robo t typically must be reprogrammed.”
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