Involving the Human User in the Control Architecture of an Autonomous Agent

Abstract : The paper presents an architecture for an autonomous robotic agent, which carries on a plan in a partially observable environment. A Supervisor module is in charge of assuring the correct execution of the plan, possibly by inferring alternative recovery plans when unexpected contingencies occur. In the present paper we describe a control strategy where a human user is directly involved in the control loop, and plays the role of advisor by helping the robotic agent both for reducing ambiguity in the robot's observations, and for selecting the preferred recovery plan.