The Department of Defense (DOD) is actively pursuing remote supervision of Unmanned Air/Ground Vehicles for surveillance and reconnaissance. The software for building and executing robot plans with contingent tasks combines reactivity with the predictability needed for such operations. The ability to perform contingent tasks based on what has been discovered by earlier tasks in the plan also is relevant to this domain. In the private sector, electronic procedures and technology for procedure assistance provide a means of gradually deploying plant automation. The technology for building and executing contingent plans supports defining reactive plant automation that adjusts tasks in response to production performance. Plants that have telemetry and commanding is available electronically are the most likely to adopt this technology, such as 1) Refineries, (2) Petrochemical plants, (3) Power plants (nuclear, conventional), (4) Pharmaceutical plants, (5) Food processing plants, and (6) Ethanol plants.
The proposed technology for building and executing plans with contingent tasks has immediate application to NASA robotic field tests with intelligent rovers. The Science Team planning rover plan can express their priorities as minimum science requirements within the plan, with options for going beyond these minima as opportunity arises. The Flight Team responsible to execute these plans can adapt the plan by selecting among alternative tasks based on conditions and observations made during plan execution. Longer term, the proposed project provides a technology pathfinder for exploration missions where astronauts must supervise intelligent planetary robots without the real-time backup from Earth that is possible for near-Earth missions. The use of plans with contingent tasks provides a means for the Earth-based planning team to express priorities in mission objectives and to predicate the decision about what tasks the rover performs on what the rover discovers. This approach gives astronauts flexibility to adapt the plan when opportunities or problems arise to maximize mission return.
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