Teleo-Reactive Programs for Agent Control

TL;DR

This paper introduces teleo-reactive (T-R) programs as a formalism for controlling autonomous agents in dynamic environments, emphasizing their compact, adaptable circuitry and compatibility with planning and learning.

Contribution

The paper presents T-R programs, a novel formalism that constructs compact, run-time circuitry for agent control, supporting feedback, parameter binding, and recursion.

Findings

T-R programs enable continuous feedback control.

They are more compact and adaptable than traditional circuit-based systems.

Experimental applications demonstrate effectiveness in robot control.

Abstract

A formalism is presented for computing and organizing actions for autonomous agents in dynamic environments. We introduce the notion of teleo-reactive (T-R) programs whose execution entails the construction of circuitry for the continuous computation of the parameters and conditions on which agent action is based. In addition to continuous feedback, T-R programs support parameter binding and recursion. A primary difference between T-R programs and many other circuit-based systems is that the circuitry of T-R programs is more compact; it is constructed at run time and thus does not have to anticipate all the contingencies that might arise over all possible runs. In addition, T-R programs are intuitive and easy to write and are written in a form that is compatible with automatic planning and learning methods. We briefly describe some experimental applications of T-R programs in the control of simulated and actual mobile robots.