Introducing Planning to Lego Mindstorms Robots

📄 Project Abstract

The purpose of this project was to build a system whereby Lego Mindstorms robots could be given the ability to perform planned behaviour. By "planned behaviour", it is meant that the robot will, in attempting to achieve a goal, identify pre-specified actions which will lead it to this goal, and execute them. The actual implementation of this project involved the design of a suitable planning system, and the development of the necessary tools to enact this design. This involved, principally, the coding of a planning compiler - which converted humanwritten action code into a structure which the robot could attribute semantics to; and the development of a level of "artificial intelligence" on the robot which could read in this code and utilize it in pursuit of a number of goals. Due to both time constraints, and the technical constraints of the Lego Mindstorms technology; not all of the theoretical design was expected to be practically implemented. The minimum requirements are as follows:...