PEM-Modelling: A Framework for Designing Intelligent Robot Control

A framework for functional design of intelligent robot control is proposed. It consists of a hierarchical logical model with motion and manipulation task decomposition, sensor processing and modelling sub-structures. Each computational module, both related to task decomposition and sensor processing, is proposed to consist of modules, each of which having three generic activities: planning, executing and monitoring. Planning encompasses task decomposition activities, executing activates a mechanism to carry out the plan and monitoring observes the validity of the plan in relation to real situations. The time dependencies of planning, executing and monitoring are described with a meta-control mechanism, for which examples are introduced. The importance within the different meta-control schemes is, that they result in different different overall behavior, particularly in erroneous or unexpected situations. The framework has been verified through a practical prototype.