The ability to respond eeectively and eeciently to crisis is an important objective in many problem-solving domains. In this paper, we identify three central elements of crisis: threat, urgency, and uncertainty. We deene the space of competent problem solvers for crisis response through a task analysis (Newell and Si-mon, 1972). Speciically, we bound the space of problem solvers by determining ...

We propose a methodology to automatically generate plans for a robot excavator like a bucket loader or a backhoe. The task is formulated as one of constrained optimization in an action space that is spanned by the parameters of a prototypical digging plan. We show how geometric and force constraints are imposed on the action space to build the set of feasible plans, and discuss methods to optim...