Becoming Increasingly Reliable

Autonomousmobile robots need to detect potential failures reliably and react appropriately. Due to uncertainties about the robots and their environment, it is extremelydifficult to design reliable systems from the start. Instead, we advocate the structured control methodology, in which one starts with plans that work in nominalsituations, and then incrementally adds reactive behaviors to handle previously unanticipated situations. Wehave developed the Task Control Architecture to facilitate this methodologyby enabling monitors and exception handlers to be added to existing hierarchical plans. This paper details the application of this methodologyto a walking rover and an indoor office robot. In both cases, robot systems were produced that can autonomously traverse long distances in obstacle-filled environments.

Authors

• Reid G. Simmons

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