Online Grounding of Symbolic Planning Domains in Unknown Environments

Understand

If a robotic agent wants to exploit symbolic planning techniques to achieve some goal, it must be able to properly ground an abstract planning domain in the environment in which it operates.

• However, if the environment is initially unknown by the agent, the agent needs to explore it and discover the salient aspects of the environment needed to reach its goals.
• Namely, the agent has to discover: (i) the objects present in the environment, (ii) the properties of these objects and their relations, and finally (iii) how abstract actions can be successfully executed.
• The paper proposes a framework that aims to accomplish the aforementioned perspective for an agent that perceives the environment partially and subjectively, through real value sensors (e.g., GPS, and on-board camera) and can operate in the environment through low level actuators (e.g., move forward of 20 cm).