A System of Reasoning for Intelligent Robots

这一建议解决了创建自主智能代理的一个核心问题：发展一种理论，什么构成合理的结论和决策的基础上提供给代理的信息。长期以来，人们一直认为，这些结论在性质上并不纯粹是演绎性的，也就是说，这些结论不一定是所提供的信息在逻辑上所必然得出的;相反，它们是可撤销的，因为在面对新信息时，这些结论可能需要撤回。由于现实世界的环境中，智能自主代理被假定为操作不提供完整的信息，可废止推理的理论是必要的，以支持代理规划。当前的可废止推理理论并不完全适合构建这样的代理的任务，这个建议的目的是解决这个问题，在两个方面：（1）构建和实现一个理论的可废止推理适合自主代理;（2）采用该系统的推理作为推理机，以支持决策理论规划代理。这个项目采用了一种混合的方法，结合了符号和概率技术。这项研究建立在PI正在进行的OSCAR项目的基础上，该项目旨在开发一般的自主认知代理。该项目侧重于决策理论规划的特定问题，这是一个与广泛背景相关的问题，例如自主火星式漫游者的空间探索。

This proposal addresses a central problem in the creation of autonomous intelligent agents: the development of a theory of what constitutes reasonable conclusions and decisions made on the basis of information supplied to the agents. Such conclusions have long been recognized to be not purely deductive in nature, that is, the conclusions are not necessarily logically entailed by the information supplied; rather they are defeasible in the sense that the conclusions might need to be withdrawn in the face of new information. Since real-world environments in which intelligent autonomous agents are presumed to operate do not provide complete information, a theory of defeasible reasoning is necessary for supporting agent planning. Current theories of defeasible reasoning are not entirely adequate for the task of building such agents, and this proposal aims to address this problem in two ways: (1) construct and implement a theory of defeasible reasoning suitable for autonomous agents; and (2) employ that system of reasoning as an inference engine to support decision-theoretic planning by agents. This project takes a hybrid approach that combines symbolic and probabilistic techniques. The research builds on the PI's ongoing OSCAR project that is aimed at developing autonomous cognitive agents in general. This project focuses on the particular problem of decision-theoretic planning, a problem relevant to a wide range of contexts such as exploration of space by autonomous Mars-style rovers.