Rob Wortham is a Lecturer in Robotics & Autonomous Systems, Director of Studies, MSc
Robotics & Autonomous Systems, Dept of Electronic & Electrical
Engineering, University of Bath, UK
Abstract: One of the fundamental challenges of all embodied and virtual agent
based systems is the challenge of action selection: Given a set of
desired goals and a set of sensory inputs, how does an agent decide what
to do next? In this talk I will describe how we can take inspiration
from observations of natural intelligence to develop a structure and
methodology for the development of reactive action selection systems
that have been shown to produce usefully intelligent virtual agents and
robots. This ‘reactive planning’ approach also has the incidental
benefit of lending itself strongly to the development of transparent AI
systems; an important consideration as we seek to produce ethically
aligned autonomous systems.