Modelling the actions of an intervention robot

Reviews the inadequacies of models of robot actions, proposed in the literature for intervention tasks. The STRIPS-inspired model of robot actions defined in terms of pre-conditions and post-conditions is extended by defining conditions which qualify the execution contexts of the actions. It is demonstrated that when all of the conditions are defined in terms of state variables and their possible values it becomes possible to study the soundness of the specifications of the possible actions to be performed, and the soundness of the interrelationships between these specifications. To this end, a particular kind of Petri net is proposed. An example of a mobile robot is also presented