Advances in plan-based control of robotic agents : international seminar, Dagstuhl Castle, Germany, October 21-26, 2001 : revised papers

In Recent Years, Autonomous Robots, Including Xavier, Martha [1], Rhino [2,3], Minerva,and Remote Agent, Have Shown Impressive Performance In Long-term Demonstrations. In Nasa’s Deep Space Program, For Example, An - Tonomous Spacecraft Controller, Called The Remote Agent [5], Has Autonomously Performed A Scienti?c Experiment In Space. At Carnegie Mellon University, Xavier [6], Another Autonomous Mobile Robot, Navigated Through An O?ce - Vironment For More Than A Year, Allowing People To Issue Navigation Commands And Monitor Their Execution Via The Internet. In 1998, Minerva [7] Acted For 13 Days As A Museum Tourguide In The Smithsonian Museum, And Led Several Thousand People Through An Exhibition. These Autonomous Robots Have In Common That They Rely On Plan-based C- Trol In Order To Achieve Better Problem-solving Competence. In The Plan-based Approach, Robots Generate Control Actions By Maintaining And Executing A Plan That Is E?ective And Has A High Expected Utility With Respect To The Robots’ C- Rent Goals And Beliefs. Plans Are Robot Control Programs That A Robot Can Not Only Execute But Also Reason About And Manipulate [4]. Thus, A Plan-based C- Troller Is Able To Manage And Adapt The Robot’s Intended Course Of Action — The Plan — While Executing It And Can Thereby Better Achieve Complex And Changing Tasks. Plan-based Multi-robot Cooperation / Rachid Alami And Silvia Silva Da Costa Bothelho -- Plan-based Control For Autonomous Soccer Robots -- Preliminary Report / Michael Beetz And Andreas Hofhauser -- Reliable Multi-robot Coordination Using Minimal Communication And Neural Prediction / Sebastian Buck, Thorsten Schmitt And Michael Beetz -- Collaborative Exploration Of Unknown Environments With Teams Of Mobile Robots / Wolfram Burgard, Mark Moors And Frank Schneider -- Mental Models For Robot Control / Hans-dieter Burkhard, Joscha Bach, Ralf Berger, Birger Brunswieck And Michael Gollin -- Perceptual Anchoring: A Key Concept For Plan Execution In Embedded Systems / Silvia Coradeschi And Alessandro Saffiotti. Michael Beetz ... [et Al.], Eds. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. In recent years, autonomous robots, including Xavier, Martha [1], Rhino [2,3], Minerva, and Remote Agent, have shown impressive performance in long-term demonstrations. In NASA's Deep Space program, for example, an - tonomous spacecraft controller, called the Remote Agent [5], has autonomously performed a scienti?c experiment in space. At Carnegie Mellon University, Xavier [6], another autonomous mobile robot, navigated through an o?ce - vironment for more than a year, allowing people to issue navigation commands and monitor their execution via the Internet. In 1998, Minerva [7] acted for 13 days as a museum tourguide in the Smithsonian Museum, and led several thousand people through an exhibition. These autonomous robots have in common that they rely on plan-based c- trol in order to achieve better problem-solving competence. In the plan-based approach, robots generate control actions by maintaining and executing a plan that is e?ective and has a high expected utility with respect to the robots' c- rent goals and beliefs. Plans are robot control programs that a robot can not only execute but also reason about and manipulate [4]. Thus, a plan-based c- troller is able to manage and adapt the robot's intended course of action -- the plan -- while executing it and can thereby better achieve complex and changing tasks Plan-Based Multi-robot Cooperation....Pages 1-20 Plan-Based Control for Autonomous Soccer Robots Preliminary Report....Pages 21-35 Reliable Multi-robot Coordination Using Minimal Communication and Neural Prediction....Pages 36-51 Collaborative Exploration of Unknown Environments with Teams of Mobile Robots....Pages 52-70 Mental Models for Robot Control....Pages 71-88 Perceptual Anchoring: A Key Concept for Plan Execution in Embedded Systems....Pages 89-105 Progressive Planning for Mobile Robots A Progress Report....Pages 106-122 Reasoning about Robot Actions: A Model Checking Approach....Pages 123-139 Lifelong Planning for Mobile Robots....Pages 140-156 Learning How to Combine Sensory-Motor Modalities for a Robust Behavior....Pages 157-178 Execution-Time Plan Management for a Cognitive Orthotic System....Pages 179-192 Path Planning for Cooperating Robots Using a GA-Fuzzy Approach....Pages 193-210 Performance of a Distributed Robotic System Using Shared Communication Channels....Pages 211-225 Use of Cognitive Robotics Logic in a Double Helix Architecture for Autonomous Systems....Pages 226-248 The dd & p Robot Control Architecture....Pages 249-269 Decision-Theoretic Control of Planetary Rovers....Pages 270-289 This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of an international seminar on Plan-Based Control of Robotic Agents held at Dagstuhl Castle, Germany in October 2001. The 16 full papers included in the book have gone through two rounds of reviewing and revision and present an up-to-date survey of the state of the art on research in plan-based control of robotic agents. Besides general issues from robotics, agent systems, control, AI planning, algorithmic learning, and problem solving are plan-based high-level control, probabilistic reasoning, plan transformation, and resource adaptive reasoning key topics addressed in the papers