The case study approach

In the invented Corvale scenario, a robot moving at 1.5 metres per second needs to stop for a child who steps out. A round trip to the cloud over the mobile network takes about 200 ms and sometimes fails. Why is pedestrian detection run on the robot's own computer rather than in the cloud?

A Corvale robot's ultrasonic sensors report distances in centimetres. Readings below 0 or above 400 are faults and must be ignored. What does this program print?

readings = [120, -1, 95, 900, 88]
closest = 400
valid = 0
for r in readings:
    if r >= 0 and r <= 400:
        valid = valid + 1
        if r < closest:
            closest = r
print(valid, closest)

Each Corvale robot has a stop button that a pedestrian may press at any moment, though it is pressed only a few times a month. The robot runs on a battery. How should the robot's software detect a press?

A Corvale robot must hold 1.5 metres per second on Hill Road. Its wheel speed sensor measures the actual speed many times a second, and the controller raises or lowers the motor power to close the gap. Which description fits this system?

Corvale's object detector was trained mostly on daytime images from a much larger city. After dark, the robots in Corvale miss more pedestrians than in daylight. Which explanation fits best?

Corvale's cloud platform sends each one-time lid code to the robot over the mobile network. Which measure stops someone who intercepts the traffic from reading the code?