In the future, webs of unmanned air and space vehicles will act together to robustly perform elaborate missions in uncertain environments. We coordinate these systems by introducing a reactive model-based programming language (RMPL) that combines within a single unified representation the flexibility of embedded programming and reactive execution languages, and the deliberative reasoning power of temporal planners. The KIRK planning system takes as input a problem expressed as a RMPL program, and compiles it into a temporal plan network (TPN), similar to those used by temporal planners, but extended for symbolic constraints and decisions. This intermediate representation clarifies the relation between temporal planning and causal-link planning, and permits a single task model to be used for planning and execution. Such a unified model has been described as a holy grail for autonomous agents by the designers of the Remote Agent[Muscettola et al., 1998b]. 1 Model-based Programming The r...
Phil Kim, Brian C. Williams, Mark Abramson