This paper describes a novel approach to high-level robot programming based on a highly developed logical theory of action. The user provides a specification of the robot's basic actions (their preconditions and effects on the environment) as well as of relevant aspects of the environment, in an extended version of the situation calculus. He can then specify robot behaviors in terms of these actions in a programming language that allows references to world conditions (e.g. if 9c(Pop can(c) On table(c)) then pick up(c)). The programs can be executed to drive the robot. The interpreter automatically maintains the world model required to execute programs based on the specification. The theoretical framework includes a solution to the frame problem and is very general --- it handles dynamic and incompletely known worlds, as well as perception actions. Given this kind of domain specification, it is also possible to support more sophisticated reasoning, such as task planni...

A robot must often react to events in its environment and exceptional conditions by suspendingor abandoning its current plan and selecting a new plan that is an appropriate response to the event. This paper describes how high-level controllers for robots that are reactive in this sense can conveniently be implemented in ConGolog, a new logic-based robot/agent programming language. Reactivity is achieved by exploiting ConGolog's prioritized concurrent processes and interrupts facilities. The language also provides nondeterministic constructs that support a form of planning. Program execution relies on a declarative domain theory to model the state of the robot and its environment. The approach is illustrated with a mail delivery application. Introduction Reactivity is usually understood as having mainly to do with strict constraints on reaction time. As such, much work on the design of reactive agents has involved non-deliberative approaches where behavior is hardwired (Brooks 1986) o...

The vast majority of mobile robotic systems have been designed to solve "one off", unique problems, with specialized sensors, robot hardware and computation; and porting robotics software from one platform to another has always been a thorny problem. In this paper, we show how by choosing an appropriate level of abstraction, one can write hardware-independent controllers for robots that perform complex navigation and reasoning tasks. The approach is based on a logical framework that integrates reasoning, perception, and action. We also describe steps we have taken towards specifying a general interface through which our high-level programs can interact with a variety of robotic platforms. As an example, we discuss a mail delivery program that runs on both an RWI B21 and a Nomad200 system. 1 Introduction Although autonomous robots have been built to follow roads, survey industrial environments, deliver material in hospitals, etc., most of them are still "one off" syste...