The 5th International Symposium on Robotics in Construction June 6-8,1988 Tokyo. Japan Issues in Domain Modeling of Constructed Facilities

Robots operating in a constructed facility must possess knowledge about and a description of their environment . This information is organized into a domain model . This paper presents current work investigating issues in developing domain models of constructed facilities for robotic applications using an object-oriented approach . Requirements regarding model contents and functionality are identified and the basic architecture of a modeling system is outlined . An object-oriented approach , with Smalltalk-80 as the implementation language, is used in building the modeling system . Modeling issues under study arise from the descriptions of model objects , relations between objects, and services provided by the modeling system in support of planning activities . Additional modeling issues result from the mapping of the domain into the multi -layered network structure of the model . The paper concentrates on a discussion of these issues and alternative solution approaches to the problems which arise from this object -oriented approach to domain modeling.