Ph.D. Dissertation Defense “Anticipation in Dynamic Environments: Deciding What to Monitor” By Zohreh A. Dannenhauer

Ph.D. Committee:  Drs. Michael T. Cox Co-Advisor, Michael Raymer Co-Advisor, Michelle Cheatham, Pascal Hitzler, Matt Molineaux (WSRI), and Hector Munoz-Avila (Lehigh University)

ABSTRACT

In dynamic environments, external changes may occur that may affect planning decisions and goal choices.  We claim that an intelligent agent should actively watch for what can go wrong and anticipate changes in the environment that allows the changing of its plan or changing of a given goal. In this thesis, we focus on the relationship between perception, act, interpretation, and planning.  We claim that these components are not independent and need to interact with each other to help the agent succeed in achieving its goals and plans. If newly encountered world information affects the plan the agent adapts to it through the refinement of plans under construction.  If the justification for goal selection changes, then the agent should transform or abandon the goal.  Our approach is to make perception sensitive to relevant changes in the environment that can affect plans and goals.  We will present results with a cognitive architecture in different domains such as blocksworld, logistics, minecraft and a Baxter humanoid robot to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.