Reactive Robots in the Service of Production Management

• Authors: Elpida S. Tzafestas
• Venue: Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems
• Year: 1998

In this paper, we advocate the use of reactive robots in industrialprocess control and production management. It is explained why reactiverobots are well-suited to modern industrial applications that necessitate ahigh degree of autonomy and reactivity to unforeseen events and anillustrative example is studied in depth. A reactive robot whose role is toregulate the demands of a set of service units for tool use is described anddifferent behavioral models for it studied and compared. Extensivesimulation studies have revealed that a behavioral model relying onindividual independent motivations of the robot is sufficient for it toexhibit the “optimal” behavior in this case. The process ismodeled as a dynamical system that tends by itself to a steady state andthat is perturbed by the robot. In turn, the robot’s motivations havea steady state of their own which is contradictory with the process’steady state and hence is perturbed by its presence. As a consequence, therobot and the process are two coupled dynamical systems that perturb eachother as each one tries to arrive to its steady state. For the designer,modeling of the overall problem in this way, has as a consequence that themotivational state space of the robot may be designed in advance given theprocess characteristics and this design should be based on a worst-caseanalysis. The mythical distinction between reactivity and planning is alsorediscussed and the notion of operationality as opposed to optimality isexplored.