PLANIT: Tasking Robots by Using English Plans  -- see Outline

Technical Abstract

Lexikos' proposed Agency web site encapsulates on-line services and downloads enabling natural language processing for English.   These resources offer dialog-mode English I/O powers to authorized intelligent agents running anywhere on the Internet.

An existing team of mobile robots provides an excellent case-study venue to refine how this might work.  We propose to use English to give the team brief goals to achieve, and (earlier) much longer plans on how, via Agency and a special interface module.

Planit is a web service implementing the needed interface:  by passing it paragraphs, an operator at a browser can create and adjust plans for a small library of missions to be physically accomplished by Planit and the robots as a team.

On command, Planit guides and monitors the team as it tries to execute a named plan.  A log of the resulting activity, fed back by Planit to Agency and the operator, reports noticed results or problems in the plan, allowing mid-mission changes.

In this joint project, the people separately building the robots and Agency will collaborate on Planit's design and planning language, seeking to demonstrate effective English dialog management of automata operating independently

Anticipated Benefits/Potential Commercial Applications

Many commercial applications exist for agent-planning applications in manufacturing and corporate workflow settings.   This work will prototype, as a portable Java-based web-service, a planning module whose input language substantially advances the state-of-the-art and aids planning and scripting by people not trained as programmers.

Linguistic, plan-based controls of mobile robots are a special case, especially well suited to remote and/or hazardous agent missions in areas hostile to human presence - such as battle zones, disaster areas, space or ocean explorations, or any small workspace.