
Chapter
6
Discussion
We have described a complete mobile robot system for collecting
soda cans in an unstructured environment. This system is un-
usual in that it is controlled by a collection of independent
behaviors rather than a centralized program, and because it uses
a minimal amount of
state.
Furthermore, the robot satisfactorily
accomplishes its task without building complex internal maps of
its environment or performing sophisticated planning operations.
A number of experiments were conducted to document the
robot's abilities and illuminate its limitations. Here we summa-
rize our overall findings and suggest avenues for further
research ...