Moving Walls

It seemed miraculous at the time; a situated automaton that knew things without needing any models. However, I thought of it as (sensor-driven) feedback control, versus (plan driven, eyes shut) feed-forward control. I then used Mike Georgeff's procedural reasoning system (PRS) to make Flakey not only drive but navigate an office building. In some respects this project succeeded: the robot's "domain knowledge" was nothing more than a static connection graph--no distances to drive, no widths of halls or doorways, no a priori obstacles--such information was acquired en route from sensory input. In other respects, however, progress was unsatisfying.