A Control Architecture for Long-Term Autonomy of Robotic Assistants

A major challenge in deploying service robots into the real world is to design a framework that provides effective, long-term interactions with people. This includes interacting with people in a natural way, dealing with multiple users, and being continually aware of the surroundings. This paper proposes a robot control architecture that addresses these issues. First, it enables the representation of complex, sequential, and hierarchical robot tasks, in a behavior-based framework. Second, it provides a robot with the flexibility to deal with multiple requests and interruptions, over extended periods. Third, it uses a visual awareness mechanism to recognize users and to identify their need for robot interaction. We demonstrate our approach on a Pioneer 3DX mobile robot, performing service tasks in a real-world environment.