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The Soft Real-Time Agent Control Architecture

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Abstract

Real-time control has become increasingly important as technologies are moved from the lab into real world situations. The complexity associated with these systems increases as control and autonomy are distributed, due to such issues as temporal and ordering constraints, shared resources, and the lack of a complete and consistent world view. In this paper we describe a soft real-time architecture designed to address these requirements, motivated by challenges encountered in a real-time distributed sensor allocation environment. The system features the ability to generate schedules respecting temporal, structural and resource constraints, to merge new goals with existing ones, and to detect and handle unexpected results from activities. We will cover a suite of technologies being employed, including quantitative task representation, alternative plan selection, partial-order scheduling, schedule consolidation and execution and conflict resolution in an uncertain environment. Technologies which facilitate on-line real-time control, including meta-level accounting, schedule caching and variable time granularities are also discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, 01003, USA

    Bryan Horling & Victor Lesser

  2. SRI International, 33 Ravenswood Avenue, Menlo Park, CA, 94025, USA

    Régis Vincent

  3. DARPA/IPTO, 3701 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA, 22203, USA

    Thomas Wagner

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  1. Bryan Horling
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  2. Victor Lesser
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Correspondence to Bryan Horling.

Additional information

Effort sponsored in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Air Force Research Laboratory Air Force Materiel Command, USAF, under agreements number F30602-99-2-0525 and DOD DABT63-99-1-0004. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Governmental purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation thereon. This material is also based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. IIS-9812755 and IIS-9988784. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Furthermore, the views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Air Force Research Laboratory or the U.S. Government.

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Horling, B., Lesser, V., Vincent, R. et al. The Soft Real-Time Agent Control Architecture. Auton Agent Multi-Agent Syst 12, 35–91 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10458-005-3998-9

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