Managing Goals and Resources in Dynamic Environments

Abstract

A key problem for agents is responding in a timely and appropriate way to multiple, often conflicting goals in a complex, dynamic environment. In this chapter, we propose a novel goal-processing architecture that allows an agent to arbitrate between multiple conflicting goals. Building on the teleo-reactive programming framework originally developed in robotics, we introduce the notion of a resource that represents a condition that must be true for the safe concurrent execution of a durative action. We briefly outline a goal arbitration architecture for teleo-reactive programs with resources that allow an agent to respond flexibly to multiple competing goals with conflicting resource requirements.