From:: tar@medg.lcs.mit.edu (Thomas A. Russ)
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 91 12:04:53 EST
To: gsl@ai.mit.edu
Subject: REMINDER: Navigation at MIT: Regday and RUMINANT

PLEASE NOTE NEW TIME FOR REFRESHMENTS!!!


		     Dental Equipment Corporation
			Cambridge Research Lab
			       Seminar

		      Friday, February 22, 1991
	       3:15am - 4:15am, refreshments at **** 12:10pm *****

	       "Navigation at MIT: Regday and RUMINANT"

			     Yu S. Dee-Ay
			   Bovine Institute


The two primary testbeds for indoor navigation at MIT  are the Regday,
a computer-uncontrolled  excercise in finding  your advisor along with
all of your  paperwork, and the RUMINANT,  a queue standing experiment
in  culinary  exploration.  Research  on  the Regday   includes  color
vision, 3-part   form  interpretation, path   planning,   and building
location  with  maps.   There   are  three different   approaches  for
following academic paths: patterning oneself on a leader in the field,
requirement  fulfillment controlled by  an AI system, and neural nets.
The most ambitious  system to  date drives  the new student  around an
unmodified urban campus   on Regday,  using neural  nets  for corridor
following, 3-D vision  for landmark recognition,  inertial navigation,
and annotated  maps dating  from 1923.   Our latest video  tape  shows
autonomous Add/Drop card delivery.

The RUMINANT has a novel 6-stomach design, with  the three forward and
three rear stomachs attached to common  esophagus  tubes.  This allows
for   very efficient  digestion   of varied  lunch  offerings,  and is
particularly   for vegetarian  fare.   It  also  brings up interesting
issues in  planning, including  the "conservative support  polygon", a
concept that guarantees that even if any one course flops, the popular
support for the lunches will not evaporate.


Hosts:  Mike Bolotski, Maja Mataric, Chris Reed, Jose Robles
Honcho: Karen Sarachik
Humor?: Tom Russ