Extending procedural reasoning toward robot actions planning

Abstract

Procedural reasoning systems (PRS) have inspired some works in execution control and supervision, in particular in robotics applications. However, one of the main drawbacks of the PRS is the lack of planning capabilities, even though some PRS execution mechanisms and knowledge representations are related to planning. We propose some extensions to PRS, to integrate both execution and planning in the robotics domain. In particular, we propose two planning mechanisms: plan synthesis to complement existing operational procedures by building new plans from operators; and anticipation planning, which anticipates the plans and procedures execution, to advise the execution for the best option to take when facing choices, and to forecast problems that may arise due to unforeseen situations. These new extensions rely on a common language to represent plans, planning operators and operational procedures. In particular, the description we propose makes transitions between planning activities and execution seamless. This work is used in two complex real-world problems: planning and control for our autonomous mobile robots (e.g. for delivery tasks), and for the management of the transition phases of a blast furnace.