Combining Planning and Action, Lessons from Robots and the Natural World

Abstract

Acting continuously and robustly in a complex environment is something that animals and people do every day but it is something that has proved to be very difficult to engineer into robotic systems. This paper looks at developments in architectures for combining planning and acting over the past 20 years and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of this approach for industrial applications. Several examples are given of ways in which theories from the natural world have influenced the development of robotic applications. In particular in line with the reason for this symposium the paper describes how the opinions of Aaron Sloman have influenced the author and his work. The paper discusses what steps still need to be made to realise systems capable of interacting reliably with the natural world and still carrying out useful tasks. These future steps also have the potential to expand our understanding of the mechanisms used by biological systems. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.