Invited Talk at AIPS 2002 Workshop on Real World Planning

Model-based Programming of Cooperative Agile Vehicles

Brian Williams

MIT
williams@mit.edu

In the future, webs of unmanned vehicles will act together to robustly achieve elaborate missions within uncertain environments. This web may be a distributed satellite system forming an interferometer, or may be a heterogeneous set of rovers and blimps exploring Mars. We coordinate these systems by introducing a reactive model-based programming language (RMPL) that combines within a single unified representation the flexibility of embedded programming and reactive execution languages, and the deliberative reasoning power of temporal activity planners. To support fast mission planning as graph search, the KIRK planner compiles an RMPL program into a temporal plan network (TPN), similar to those used by temporal planners, but extended for symbolic constraints and decisions. To robustly coordinate agile air vehicles or rover maneuvers we combine the Kirk planning algorithm with algorithms for cooperative, kinodynamic path planning, randomized algorithms for kinodynamic path planning. This work will be described in the context of our cooperative vehicle test beds, including a set of ATRV rovers, a distributed sensor net, and a  range of autonomous helicopters and air vehicles.