Agent Architecture for Autonomous Control Systems

Barney Pell, PhD

This tutorial will provide a survey of the work in the field on different architectures for building autonomous control systems, which integrate such agent capabilities as planning, scheduling, execution, real-time control, monitoring, and diagnosis.   I will discuss the importance of architecture in addressing key themes including knowledge acquisition, integration, robustness, modularity, reuse, uncertainty, and verification.     Particular emphasis will be given to significant real-world applications, including mobile robotics, factory automation, and autonomous spacecraft.

Outline of tutorial

About the speaker:

Dr. Barney Pell is a Senior Computer Scientist in the Information Systems Division at NASA Ames Research Center.  He is currently one of the architects of the Remote Agent for the Deep Space One (DS-1) mission, leads the Intelligent Execution Agents research group at NASA Ames, and is Co-Lead of the Autonomy Integrated Product Development Team for NASA's New Millennium Program (NMP).  His current research interests include spacecraft autonomy, integrated agent architecture, reactive execution systems,collaborative software development, and strategic reasoning.  Dr. Pell received his B.S. degree with distinction in Symbolic Systems at Stanford University.  He received his Ph.D. in computer science at Cambridge University, England, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar.  Pell was guest editor for Computational Intelligence Journal in 1996 and has given tutorials on autonomous agents, space robotics, and game-playing.