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Title: Structured control for autonomous robots

Journal Article · · IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (United States)
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/70.285583· OSTI ID:7044032
 [1]
  1. Carnegie Mellon Univ., Pittsburgh, PA (United States). School of Computer Science

To operate in rich, dynamic environments, autonomous robots must be able to effectively utilize and coordinate their limited physical and occupational resources. As complexity increases, it becomes necessary to impose explicit constraints on the control of planning, perception, and action to ensure that unwanted interactions between behaviors do not occur. This paper advocates developing complex robot systems by layering reactive behaviors onto deliberative components. In this structured control approach, the deliberative components handle normal situations and the reactive behaviors, which are explicitly constrained as to when and how they are activated, handle exceptional situations. The Task Control Architecture (TCA) has been developed to support this approach. TCA provides an integrated set of control constructs useful for implementing deliberative and reactive behaviors. The control constructs facilitate modular and evolutionary system development: they are used to integrate and coordinate planning, perception, and execution, and to incrementally improve the efficiency and robustness of the robot systems. To date, TCA has been used in implementing a half-dozen mobile robot systems, including an autonomous six-legged rover and indoor mobile manipulator.

OSTI ID:
7044032
Journal Information:
IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (United States), Vol. 10:1; ISSN 1042-296X
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English