Imperative Language for Task-Level Programming: Definition in Temporal Logic

摘要

The execution of plans of actions by a robot inspired the conception of variousrepresentations, from the point of view of planning in artifical intelligence and of execution control. Planning formalisms are often based on predicate logic and its more recent extensions, particularly temporal logic. Robot programming languages, as far as concerning the task-level, feature classical control structures derived from computer programming languages, as well as more specifically real-time oriented ones. The authors propose a logical and temporal model of plans of actions augmented by an imperative control structure. They therefore define, on the basis of an interval-based temporal logic, a set of imperative control primitives that define the temporal arrangement of the actions and subplans within their scope. After that, primitives for the reaction to evolutions in the environment are defined in the same formalism, in order to respond to constraints concerning intraction and adaptation to the external world in our application domain: robotics. (Copyright (c) GMD 1991.)