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Archive-name: auto/comp.ai/ARS-MAGNA-Robot-Simulator-now-available



			    Now Available
			    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

			      ARS MAGNA
		     The Abstract Robot Simulator
			   Sean P. Engelson
		    Department of Computer Science
			   Yale University

ABSTRACT:
~~~~~~~~
AI planning research has historically operated in formal abstractions
of the real world.  This approach was useful in discovering many
fundamental issues underlying planning; also, problems in simple
domains such as the blocks world can turn out to be surprisingly
difficult.  Lately attention has turned to planning for more realistic
domains in which micro-world simplifying assumptions do not hold.
This shift of focus introduces a new problem of validation and
comparison of different planning theories and systems.  A proper
domain for planning problems must be realistically complex but also
simple enough to support controlled experimentation.

To address these questions, we developed the ARS MAGNA robot
simulator.  The simulator provides an abstract world in which a
planner controls a mobile robot.  Mobile robotics is a particularly
apposite domain since it is a major application area for AI planning
techniques.  ARS MAGNA's environment and robot models are based on
current robotics research, so that the domain is reasonably realistic.
At the same time, we abstracted away from many (though not all)
real-world details of kinematics and motor control.  Experiments may
be controlled by varying global world parameters, such as perceptual
noise, as well as building specific environments in order to exercise
particular planner features.  The world is also extensible to allow
new experimental designs that were not thought of originally.  The
simulator also includes a simple graphical user-interface which uses
the CLX interface to the X window system.


DOCUMENTATION: 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Version 1.0 of the ARS MAGNA simulator is documented in Yale Technical Report
YALEU/DCS/RR #928, "ARS MAGNA: The Abstract Robot Simulator".  This report is
available in the distribution as a Postscript(tm) file, as well as from
  Paula Murano
  Yale University 
  Department of Computer Science
  P.O. Box 2158 Yale Station
  New Haven, CT  06520-2158
  Email: murano@cs.yale.edu

Any and all comments would be most welcome, and may be directed to me, at
engelson@cs.yale.edu.


AVAILABILITY:
~~~~~~~~~~~~
ARS MAGNA can be gotten by anonymous ftp from ftp.cs.yale.edu, as
ars-magna.tar.Z in the pub/nisp directory, as follows:

% ftp ftp.cs.yale.edu
Connected to dept-gw.cs.yale.edu.
220 ra FTP server (SunOS 4.1) ready.
Name (ftp.cs.yale.edu:engelson): anonymous
331 Guest login ok, send ident as password.
Password:
230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.
ftp> cd pub/nisp
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> bin
200 Type set to I.
ftp> get ars-magna.tar.Z
200 PORT command successful.
150 Binary data connection for ars-magna.tar.Z (128.36.17.10,1220) (528589 bytes
).
226 Binary Transfer complete.
local: ars-magna.tar.Z remote: ars-magna.tar.Z
528589 bytes received in 7.4 seconds (70 Kbytes/s)
ftp> quit
221 Goodbye.
% uncompress ars-magna.tar.Z
% tar xf ars-magna.tar
%

Installation instructions are in the file Installation.readme.  The
simulator is written in Nisp, a macro-package for Common Lisp.  Nisp
can be retrieved in the same way as the simulator.  

-- 
Sean Philip (Shlomo) Engelson		
Yale Department of Computer Science	
Box 2158 Yale Station			
New Haven, CT 06520