Intelligent Robotics
Webpage: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/qr/
Director: Benjamin Kuipers
The Intelligent Robotics Lab is interested in robot exploration and mapping strategies based on qualitative recognition of distinctive places.

This lab moved with Ben Kuipers when he left UT to go to the EECS Department at the University of Michigan.
Publications
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Moving Object Segmentation Using Motor Signals 2012
Changhai Xu, Jingen Liu, and Benjamin Kuipers, In European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV 2012) 2012.
Learning Geometry from Sensorimotor Experience 2011
Jeremy Stober, Risto Miikkulainen, and Benjamin Kuipers, In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Development and Learning and Epigenetic Robotics, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, August 2011.
Motion Segmentation by Learning Homography Matrices from Motor Signals 2011
Changhai Xu and Benjamin Kuipers, Canadian Conference on Computer and Robot Vision (CRV-11) (2011).
Object Detection Using Principal Contour Fragments 2011
Changhai Xu and Benjamin Kuipers, In Canadian Conference on Computer and Robot Vision (CRV-11) 2011.
Autonomous Qualitative Learning of Distinctions and Actions in a Developing Agent 2010
Jonathan Mugan, PhD Thesis, University of Texas at Austin.
Towards the Object Semantic Hierarchy 2010
Changhai Xu and Benjamin Kuipers, In International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL-10) 2010.
3D pose estimation for planes 2009
Changhai Xu, Benjamin Kuipers, and Aniket Murarka, In ICCV Workshop on 3D Representation for Recognition (3dRR-09) 2009.
A Comparison of Strategies for Developmental Action Acquisition in QLAP 2009
Jonathan Mugan and Benjamin Kuipers, In Proceedings of the International Conference on Epigenetic Robotics (EpiRob-09), pp. 2009.
A framework for planning comfortable and customizable motion of an assistive mobile robot 2009
Shilpa Gulati, Chetan Jhurani, Benjamin Kuipers, and Raul Longoria, In IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2009.
A stereo vision based 3D mapping algorithm for detecting ramps, drop-offs, and obstacles for safe local navigation 2009
Aniket Murarka and Benjamin Kuipers, In International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2009.
Autonomously Learning an Action Hierarchy Using a Learned Qualitative State Representation 2009
Jonathan Mugan and Benjamin Kuipers, In Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-09) 2009.
Construction of the Object Semantic Hierarchy 2009
Changhai Xu and Benjamin Kuipers, In Fifth International Cognitive Vision Workshop (ICVW-09) 2009.
Learning the Sensorimotor Structure of the Foveated Retina 2009
Jeremy Stober, Lewis Fishgold, and Benjamin Kuipers, In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Epigenetic Robotics 2009.
Navigation, Control and Recovery of the ENDURANCE Under-ice Hovering AUV 2009
Kristof Richmond, Shilpa Gulati, Chris Flesher, Bartholomew P. Hogan, and William C. Stone, In International Symposium on Unmanned Untethered Submersible Technology (UUST) 2009.
Sensor Map Discovery for Developing Robots 2009
Jeremy Stober, Lewis Fishgold, and Benjamin Kuipers, In AAAI Fall Symposia Series: Manifold Learning and Its Applications 2009. Appears in AAAI Technical Report FS-09-04..
Skill Reuse in Lifelong Developmental Learning 2009
Jonathan Mugan and Benjamin Kuipers, In IROS 2009 Workshop: Autonomous Mental Development for Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 2009.
Sub-ice exploration of West Lake Bonney: ENDURANCE 2008 Mission 2009
Bill Stone, Bart Hogan, Chris Flesher, Shilpa Gulati, Kristof Richmond, Aniket Murarka, Gregory Kuhlmann, and Mohan Sridharan, In International Symposium on Unmanned Untethered Submersible Technology (UUST) 2009.
Towards a Safe, Low-Cost, Intelligent Wheelchair 2009
Aniket Murarka, Shilpa Gulati, Patrick Beeson, and Benjamin Kuipers, In Workshop on Planning, Perception and Navigation for Intelligent Vehicles (PPNIV) 2009.
Vision based frozen surface egress: A docking algorithm for the ENDURANCE AUV 2009
Aniket Murarka, Gregory Kuhlmann, Shilpa Gulati, Mohan Sridharan, Chris Flesher, and Bill Stone, In International Symposium on Unmanned Untethered Submersible Technology (UUST) 2009.
Continuous-domain reinforcement learning using a learned qualitative state representation 2008
Jonathan Mugan and Benjamin Kuipers, In 22nd International Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning (QR-08) 2008.
Creating and Utilizing Symbolic Representations of Spatial Knowledge using Mobile Robots 2008
Patrick Beeson, PhD Thesis, Computer Sciences Department, The University of Texas at Austin.
Detecting obstacles and drop-offs using stereo and motion cues for safe local motion 2008
Aniket Murarka, Mohan Sridharan and Benjamin Kuipers, In IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS-08) 2008.
From pixels to policies: a bootstrapping agent 2008
Jeremy Stober and Benjamin Kuipers, In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning 2008.
High Performance Control for Graceful Motion of an Intelligent Wheelchair 2008
Shilpa Gulati and Benjamin Kuipers, In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2008.
Ray-based color image segmentation 2008
Changhai Xu, Yong Jae Lee, and Benjamin Kuipers, In Canadian Conference on Computer and Robot Vision 2008.
Towards the Application of Reinforcement Learning to Undirected Developmental Learning 2008
Jonathan Mugan and Benjamin Kuipers, In Proceedings of the International Conference on Epigenetic Robotics (EpiRob-08) 2008.
Trajectory generation for dynamic bipedal walking through qualitative model based manifold learning 2008
Subramanian Ramamoorthy and Benjamin Kuipers, In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA-08) 2008.
Autonomous Development of a Grounded Object Ontology by a Learning Robot 2007
Joseph Modayil and Benjamin Kuipers, In Proceedings of the Twenty-Second National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-07) 2007.
Following Natural Language Route Instructions 2007
Matthew T. MacMahon, PhD Thesis, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Texas at Austin.
Integrating Multiple Representations of Spatial Knowledge for Mapping, Navigation, and Communication 2007
Patrick Beeson, Matt MacMahon, Joseph Modayil, Aniket Murarka, Benjamin Kuipers, and Brian Stankiewicz, In AAAI Spring Symposium Series, Interaction Challenges for Intelligent Assistants 2007. AAAI Technical Report SS-07-04.
Learning distinctions and rules in a continuous world through active exploration 2007
Jonathan Mugan and Benjamin Kuipers, In Proceedings of the International Conference on Epigenetic Robotics (EpiRob-07) 2007.
Learning to predict the effects of actions: synergy between rules and landmarks 2007
Jonathan Mugan and Benjamin Kuipers, In Proceedings of the International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL-07) 2007.
Reinforcement Learning in High-Diameter, Continuous Environments 2007
Jefferson Provost, PhD Thesis, Computer Sciences Department, University of Texas at Austin.
Robot Developmental Learning of an Object Ontology Grounded in Sensorimotor Experience 2007
Joseph Modayil, PhD Thesis, Computer Sciences Department, University of Texas at Austin.
Sneaking up on the Hard Problem of consciousness 2007
Benjamin Kuipers, In AI and Consciousness, AAAI Fall Symposium Series 2007.
Task Encoding, Motion Planning and Intelligent Control with Qualitative Models 2007
Subramanian Ramamoorthy, PhD Thesis, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Texas at Austin.
Where do actions come from? Autonomous robot learning of objects and actions 2007
Joseph Modayil and Benjamin Kuipers, In AAAI Spring Symposium Series 2007, Control Mechanisms for Spatial Knowledge Processing in Cognitive / Intelligent Systems 2007.
Adapting proposal distributions for accurate, efficient mobile robot localization 2006
Patrick Beeson, Aniket Murarka, and Benjamin Kuipers, In IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automaton (ICRA-06) 2006.
Autonomous Shape Model Learning for Object Localization and Recognition 2006
Joseph Modayil and Benjamin Kuipers, In IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automaton 2006.
Building local safety maps for a wheelchair robot using vision and lasers 2006
Aniket Murarka, Joseph Modayil, and Benjamin Kuipers, In Canadian Conference on Computer and Robot Vision (CRV-06) 2006.
Developing navigation behavior through self-organizing distinctive state abstraction 2006
Jefferson Provost, Benjamin J. Kuipers, and Risto Miikkulainen, Connection Science, Vol. 18 (2006), pp. 159-172.
Low-Discrepancy Curves and Efficient Coverage of Space 2006
Subramanian Ramamoorthy, Ram Rajagopal, Qing Ruan, Lothar Wenzel, In Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics VII 2006. Springer-Verlag.
Parametrization and computations in shape spaces with area and boundary invariants 2006
Subramanian Ramamoorthy, Benjamin J. Kuipers and Lothar Wenzel, In Proc. Fall Workshop on Computational and Combinatorial Geometry, Northampton, MA 2006.
Qualitative hybrid control of dynamic bipedal walking 2006
Subramanian Ramamoorthy, Benjamin Kuipers, In Robotics: Science and Systems II, G. S. Sukhatme, S. Schaal, W. Burgard and D. Fox (Eds.) 2006. MIT Press.
Bootstrap Learning of Foundational Representations. 2005
Benjamin Kuipers, Patrick Beeson, Joseph Modayil and Jefferson Provost, In Developmental Robotics, AAAI Spring Symposium Series 2005.
Consciousness: Drinking from the Firehose of Experience 2005
Benjamin Kuipers, In National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-05) 2005.
Towards autonomous topological place detection using the Extended Voronoi Graph 2005
Patrick Beeson, Nicholas K. Jong, and Benjamin Kuipers, In IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA-05) 2005.
Bootstrap learning for object discovery 2004
Joseph Modayil and Benjamin Kuipers, In IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS-04) 2004.
Controller synthesis using qualitative models and constraints 2004
Subramanian Ramamoorthy, Benjamin Kuipers, In Proceedings of the 18th International Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning, J. de Kleer and K. Forbus (Eds.), pp. 41--50 2004.
Local metrical and global topological maps in the Hybrid Spatial Semantic Hierarchy 2004
Benjamin Kuipers, Joseph Modayil, Patrick Beeson, Matt MacMahon, and Francesco Savelli, In IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA-04) 2004.
The Constructivist Learning Architecture: A Model of Cognitive Development for Robust Autonomous Robots 2004
Harold H. Chaput, PhD Thesis, Department of Computer Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin. Also Technical Report TR-04-34.
Using the topological skeleton for scalable global metrical map-building 2004
Joseph Modayil, Patrick Beeson and Benjamin Kuipers, In IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS-04), pp. 1530--1536 2004.
Exploiting local perceptual models for topological map-building 2003
Patrick Beeson, Matt MacMahon, Joseph Modayil, Jefferson Provost, Francesco Savelli and Benjamin Kuipers, In IJCAI-2003 Workshop on Reasoning with Uncertainty in Robotics (RUR-03) 2003.
Qualitative heterogeneous control of higher order systems 2003
Subramanian Ramamoorthy and Benjamin Kuipers, In Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, O. Maler and A. Pnueli (Eds.) 2003. Springer Verlag.
The skeleton in the cognitive map: a computational and empirical exploration 2003
Benjamin Kuipers, Dan Tecuci and Brian Stankiewicz, Environment and Behavior, Vol. 35, 1 (2003), pp. 80--106.
Bootstrap learning for place recognition 2002
Benjamin Kuipers and Patrick Beeson, In Proceedings of the Eighteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-02) 2002.
Qualitative modeling and heterogeneous control of global system behavior 2002
Benjamin Kuipers and Subramanian Ramamoorthy, In Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, C. J. Tomlin and M. R. Greenstreet (Eds.) 2002. Springer Verlag.
Towards a general theory of topological maps 2002
Emilio Remolina and Benjamin Kuipers, Technical Report TR-02-293, University of Texas at Austin Artificial Intelligence Lab.
A logical account of causal and topological maps 2001
Emilio Remolina, PhD Thesis, Department of Computer Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin.
Computational Perceptual Attention 2001
Micheal Scott Hewett, PhD Thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Texas at Austin.
Learning from uninterpreted experience in the SSH 2001
Benjamin Kuipers, Patrick Beeson, Joseph Modayil and Jefferson Provost, In AAAI Spring Symposium Series, Learning Grounded Representations, Stanford, CA 2001.
Post-Piagetian constructivism for grounded knowledge acquisition 2001
Harold H. Chaput, In Proceedings of the AAAI Spring Symposium Series on Grounded Knoweldge, Palo Alto, CA 2001.
The skeleton in the cognitive map: a computational hypothesis 2001
Benjamin Kuipers, In Space Syntax: Proceedings of the Third International Symposium, J. Peponis, J. Wineman and S. Bafna (Eds.), pp. 10.1--10.7 2001.
Toward bootstrap learning for place recognition 2001
Benjamin Kuipers and Patrick Beeson, AAAI Technical Report FS-01-01, ISBN 1-57735-135-5
Toward Learning the Causal Layer of the Spatial Semantic Hierarchy using SOMs 2001
Jefferson Provost, Patrick Beeson, and Benjamin J. Kuipers, In AAAI Spring Symposium Series, Learning Grounded Representations 2001.
The Spatial Semantic Hierarchy 2000
Benjamin Kuipers, Artificial Intelligence, 1-2 (2000), pp. 191-233.
Boundary region relations 1998
Emilio Remolina and Benjamin Kuipers, In Cognitive Robotics, Papers from the 1998 AAAI Fall Symposium, pp. 117--124, Menlo Park, CA 1998. AAAI Press. Technical report FS-98-02.
Integrating vision and spatial reasoning for assistive navigation 1998
W. S. Gribble, R. L. Browning, M. Hewett, E. Remolina and Benjamin J. Kuipers, In Assistive Technology and Artificial Intelligence, V. Mittal and H. Yanco and J. Aronis and R. Simpson (Eds.), Berlin 1998. Springer.
Navigation and mapping in large scale space 1998
Benjamin J. Kuipers and T. Levitt, AI Magazine, Vol. 9, 2 (1998), pp. 25--43. Reprinted in Advances in Spatial Reasoning, Volume 2, Su-shing Chen (Ed.), Norwood NJ: Ablex Publishing, 1990.
The Impact of Perception on Agent Architectures 1998
Micheal Hewett, In Proceedings of the AAAI-98 Workshop on Software Tools for Developing Agents 1998.
Towards a formalization of the spatial semantic hierarchy 1998
Emilio Remolina and Benjamin Kuipers, In Fourth Symposium on Logical Formalizations of Commonsense Reasoning (Common Sense 98), London, England, January 1998.
A hierarchy of qualitative representations for space 1996
Benjamin Kuipers, In Working Papers of the Tenth International Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning About Physical Systems, Menlo Park, CA 1996. AAAI Press.
Spatial Semantic Hierarchy for a Physical Mobile Robot 1996
Wan Yik Lee, PhD Thesis, Department of Computer Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin.
A Guide to Programming Spot, a Mobile Robot of the University of Texas at Austin 1995
Wan Yik Lee, Technical Report AI95-235, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, The University of Texas at Austin, AI Laboratory.
High-Speed Navigation with Approximate Maps 1995
Richard Froom, PhD Thesis, Department of Computer Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin.
Map Learning with Uninterpreted Sensors and Effectors 1995
David M. Pierce, Artificial Intelligence (1995), pp. 169-227. 169-227.
Programming Spot in Lisp with SpotLisp Package 1995
Wan Yik Lee, Technical Report AI95-240, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, The University of Texas at Austin.
Qualitative reasoning about dynamic change in the spatial properties of a physical system 1995
Raman Rajagopalan, PhD Thesis, Department of Computer Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin. Available as TR AI95-241.
Slow visual search in a fast-changing world 1995
William S. Gribble, In Proceedings of the 1995 IEEE Symposium on Computer Vision (ISCV-95) 1995.
Learning to explore and build maps 1994
D. Pierce and Benjamin Kuipers, In Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-94) 1994. AAAI/MIT Press.
Short Algernon Reference Manual (for Algernon version 1.3.0) 1994
Benjamin J. Kuipers and J. M. Crawford, unpublished. Unpublished manuscript.
The composition and validation of heterogeneous control laws 1994
Benjamin J. Kuipers and K. Astrom, Automatica, Vol. 30, 2 (1994), pp. 233--249.
Algernon for Expert Systems 1993
Benjamin Kuipers, Unpublished manuscript
Automated modeling of physical systems in the presence of incomplete knowledge 1993
Adam Farquhar, PhD Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Department of Computer Sciences.
The semantic hierarchy in robot learning 1993
Benjamin Kuipers, R. Froom, W.-Y. Lee and D. Pierce, Robot LearningJ. Connell and S. Mahadevan (Eds.) (1993).
Approximate maps for high-speed control of a mobile robot 1992
Richard Froom, In Mobile Robots VII: Proceedings of SPIE -- the International Society for Optical Engineering v. 1831, pp. 15--20, Boston, MA, November 1992.
Results of an experiment in domain knowledge base construction: a comparison of the Classic and Algernon knowledge representation systems 1992
Raman Rajagopalan, In Working Papers of the AAAI Workshop on Tractable Reasoning (AAAI-92), San Jose, CA 1992.
A robot exploration and mapping strategy based on a semantic hierarchy of spatial representations 1991
Benjamin J. Kuipers and Y.-T. Byun, Journal of Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Vol. 8 (1991), pp. 47--63. Reprinted in Walter Van de Velde (ed.), Towards Learning Robots, Bradford/MIT Press, 1993.
Acquiring effective knowledge of environment geometry for minimum-time control of a mobile robot 1991
Richard Froom, In Proceedings of the 1991 IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Control, pp. 501--506, Arlington, VA, August 1991.
Algernon -- a tractable system for knowledge representation 1991
J. M. Crawford and Benjamin J. Kuipers, SIGART Bulletin, Vol. 2, 3 (1991), pp. 35--44.
ALL: formalizing access-limited reasoning 1991
J. M. Crawford and Benjamin J. Kuipers, In Principles of Semantic Networks, John Sowa (Eds.), pp. 299--330, San Mateo, CA 1991. Morgan Kaufmann.
Learning hill-climbing functions as a strategy for generating behaviors in a mobile robot 1991
David M. Pierce and Benjamin J. Kuipers, In From Animals to Animats: Proceedings of the International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior, J.-A. Meyer and S. W. Wilson (Eds.), pp. 327--336 1991. MIT Press/Bradford Books: Cam...
Learning turn and travel actions with an uninterpreted sensorimotor apparatus 1991
David M. Pierce, In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 246--251, Los Alamitos, CA 1991. IEEE Computer Society Press.
Negation and proof by contradiction in access-limited logic 1991
J. M. Crawford and Benjamin J. Kuipers, In Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-91) 1991. AAAI/MIT Press.
The composition of heterogeneous control laws 1991
Benjamin Kuipers and Karl Astrom, In Proceedings of the American Control Conference, pp. 630--636 1991.
Access-Limited Logic: A Language for Knowledge Representation 1990
James Crawford, PhD Thesis, Department of Computer Sciences, University of Texas at Austin. UT Artificial Intelligence TR AI90-141.
QPC: a compiler from physical models into qualitative differential equations 1990
J. M. Crawford, A. Farquhar, Benjamin J. Kuipers, In Proceedings of the Eighth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-90), pp. 365-372, Boston, MA 1990.
Toward a theory of access-limited logic for knowledge representation 1989
J. M. Crawford and Benjamin J. Kuipers, In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR'89), Los Altos, CA 1989. Morgan Kaufmann.
A robust qualitative method for spatial learning in unknown environments 1988
Benjamin J. Kuipers and Y.-T. Byun. , In Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-88) 1988.
The Map-Learning Critter 1985
Benjamin Kuipers, Technical Report AI TR 85-17, University of Texas at Austin, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Modeling human knowledge of routes: partial knowledge and individual variation 1983
Benjamin J. Kuipers, In Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-83) 1983. Morgan Kaufmann.
The cognitive map: Could it have been any other way? 1983
Benjamin J. Kuipers, In Spatial Orientation: Theory, Research, and Application, H. L. Pick, Jr. and L. P. Acredolo (Eds.), pp. 345--359, New York 1983. Plenum Press.
The `Map in the Head' metaphor 1982
Benjamin J. Kuipers, Environment and Behavior, Vol. 14 (1982), pp. 202--220.
Commonsense knowledge of space: learning from experience 1979
Benjamin J. Kuipers, In Proceedings of the Sixth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-79) 1979. Morgan Kaufmann. Reprinted in Advances in Spatial Reasoning, Volume 2, Su-shing Chen (Ed.)...
On representing common sense knowledge 1979
Benjamin J. Kuipers, In Associative Networks: The Representation and Use of Knowledge by Computers, N. V. Findler (Eds.), pp. 393--408, New York 1979. Academic Press.
Modeling spatial knowledge 1978
Benjamin J. Kuipers, Cognitive Science, Vol. 2 (1978), pp. 129--153.
Representing Knowledge of Large-Scale Space 1977
Benjamin J. Kuipers, PhD Thesis, Mathematics Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Published as Technical Report 418, M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, 1977.
Projects
The Spatial Semantic Hierarchy
UT Intelligent Wheelchair Project
Areas of Interest
Bootstrap Learning Control Description Logics Enabling Technologies Geometric Or Spatial Reasoning Navigation and Mapping Robotics The Intelligent Wheelchair
Software/Data
Algernon Access-Limited Logic is a language for representing knowledge in the computer, and a method for drawing conclusions and ...
QPC: Qualitative Process Compiler The latest release includes Algernon 1.3.3 but not QSIM. QPC requires QSIM...
QSIM The world is infinite, continuous, and continually changing over time. Human knowledge and human inference abilities are...