An object-based robot ontology

Abstract

An ontology encompassing objects and relations between them as well as the robot treated dually, as an object and a controlled device, is presented. Objects and relations between them are defined in terms of attributes which obtain their values through the robot’s perception subsystem. Robot behaviours are defined in terms of transition functions and terminal conditions that also operate on percepts, thus tasks formulated in terms of symbolic concepts such as objects and relations can be formally transformed into control of effectors and vice versa. Thus the anchoring problem is solved. A formal approach enabling the mentioned transformations between different abstractions is presented.