A planner for time-space coordination of robots in a structured workspace

In industrial applications, tasks for robotic workcells are typically specified by programs written in conventional programming languages such as VAL-II and Karel. Devising planners which synthesize programs from high-level specification statements is a research problem of considerable difficulty, owing to the multiagent, real-time nature of the activities of a robotic workcell. An experimental planner for such high-level task specification is described. The planner is based on abstracting the time-space coordination aspects typical of a wide range of manufacturing tasks. The planner architecture consists of three modules, with the functions of plan generation (providing partially elaborated plans), space-time planning (yielding fully elaborated plans), and the monitoring of plan execution