Abstract

There are striking parallels between ecological psychology and the new trends in robotics and computer vision, particularly regarding how agents interact with the environment. We present some ideas from ecological psychology, including control laws using optic flow, affordances and action modes, and describe our implementation of these concepts in a small mobile robot which can avoid obstacles and chase or flee moving targets solely using optic flow. The properties of these methods were further explored in simulation. This work ties in with that of others arguing for a methodological approach in robotics which foregoes a central model/planner. Ecological psychology may not only contribute to robotics, but robotic implementations may in turn provide a test bed for ecological principles and a source of ideas which could be tested in animals and humans. Keywords: ecological psychology, behavior-based robotics, optic flow, obstacle avoidance, tag. ECOLOGICAL ROBOTICS 2 Introduction Over...

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