Modeling of agent´s behavior in human-robot interaction using model integrated computing

Due to a continuous increase in the need to provide more services to health care through robotic aid systems developed for the disabled, the need for addressing human-robot interaction (HRI) has gained the utmost importance. HRI is based on a multi-agent architecture, the Intelligent Machine Architecture (IMA) (R.A. Peters II et al., 1999; W.A. Alford et al., 1999), a new approach for software design for intelligent machines that are principally limited by difficulty in integrating existing algorithms, models, and subsystems. A system of interactive software agents, designed within IMA, encapsulates the various hardware elements, environmental elements, behaviors and tasks. IMA suggests “a society of agents” (M. Minsky, 1985) paradigm to create complex high-level functionality from any sublevels of components. The high-level agents currently employ finite state machines to sequence the activation and suppression of behavior agents. A state machine is realized by two components: state machine engine and state machine representation. Model Integrated Computing (MIC) (G. Nordstrom et al., 1998) is used to model the behavior of the IMA agents. The paper presents a toolkit that designs the agent´s behavior through a state-transition metamodeling environment and builds the agent with the help of an existing Agent Builder application