Managing robot autonomy and interactivity using motives and visual communication

Abstract

An autonomous mobile robot operating in everyday life conditions will have to face a huge variety of situations and to interact with other agents (living or artificial). Such a robot needs flexible and robust methods for managing its goals and for adapting its control mechanisms to face the contingencies of the world. It also needs to communicate with others in order to get useful information about the world. This paper describes an approach based on a general architecture and on internal variables called 'motives' to manage the goals of an autonomous robot. These variables are also used as a basis for communication using a visual communication system. Experiments using a vision-and sonar-based Pioneer I robot, equipped with a visual signaling device, are presented.