The NIST robotic architectures and the command and control architecture for a European mobile robotics project (PANORAMA)

Summary form only given. In a large-scale system, specification and requirements, systems architecture and representations, information and resource management, and command and control are critical infrastructural systems issues. In considering the command and control aspects of a robotic AGV, three principal elements need to be considered; the systems architecture (the mapping of a system specification and requirement through, say, data flow diagrams onto an overall process interrelational structure), the system processes and the system management infrastructure. A specific robotics architecture that has attracted considerable attention is the USA National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) architecture; this paper covers this functional-hierarchical architecture as well as the hierarchical-behavioural approach. The NIST family of open system control architectures are intended to establish a common framework of modules and interfaces structured in a hierarchical format. The architectures incorporate specific AI features such as goal decomposition, hierarchical real time planning, hierarchical world modelling, model-driven sensory processing and blackboards for a global database. They are evolutionary, in that the systems´ capability and autonomy can expand