Plan guided reaction

A set of architectural concepts that address the needs for integrating high-level planning activities with lower-level reactive or participatory behaviors is presented. Based on lessons learned from the authors´ experience with a hierarchical architecture for autonomous cross-country navigation, various pitfalls that may arise from the misuse of abstraction have been recognized. Consequently, a new approach that emphasizes the minimization of information loss both within and between system layers has been adopted. This change in perspective has allowed the authors to greatly enhance the overall capabilities and performance of their system