The Saphira architecture: a design for autonomy

摘要

Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence (JETAI) 9, 1997, 215-235. Special issue on Architectures for Physical Agents. Mobile robots, if they areto perform useful tasks andbecome accepted in open environments, must be fully autonomous. Autonomy has many different aspects; here we concentrate on three central ones: the ability to attend to another agent, to take advice about the environment, and to carry out assigned tasks. All three involve complex sensing and planning operations on the part of the robot, including the use of visual tracking of humans, coordination of motor controls, and planning. We show how these capabilities are integrated in the Saphira architecture, using the concepts of coordination of behavior, coherence of modeling, and communication with other agents. This paper reports work done while this author was at SRI International. 1 Autonomous Mobile Agents What are the minimal capabilities for an autonomous mobile agent? Posed in this way,...