Overview of the Control System

Abstract

This chapter describes our conceptualization of, and a software architecture for, plan-based control of robotic agents. The chapter is organized as follows. We will start in section 2.1 with describing an abstract control model for the class of robot control problems that we investigate. This model integrates aspects of a dynamic system model, which is primarily used in control theory, with a “rational” agent model, that is primarily used for the characterization of problem-solving systems in Artificial Intelligence. Section 2.1 also introduces key concepts and terminology used in the remainder of this Thesis. Section 2.2 describes different environment representations that support in particular the plan-based control of the robotic agent. Section 2.3 outlines the computational structure of the overall control system in which our plan-based control mechanisms are integrated.

Dean and Wellmann (1991) and Passino and Antsaklis (1989) give very informative overviews of the use of dynamic system models in AI planning.