Planning in a hierarchical nested controller for autonomous robots

In this paper, methods developed for the team theory of decentralized stochastic control are applied to autonomous robots. A class of autonomous control systems is defined, and a problem of information representation is addressed for this class. A phenomenon of nesting is detrermined to be a key element for arranging design and control procedures. A concept of hierarchical nested knowledge-based controller is introduced in this paper which enables optimum control using nested dynamic programming. An application of this concept is unfolded for a system of knowledge-based control of an autonomous mobile robot.