Solving Time-Dependent Problems: A Decision-Theoretic Approach to Planning in Dynamic Environments
Mark Boddy · 1991
Controlling a robot involves making decisions that modify its behavior. Making good decisions may require time-consuming computation. Changes in the environment over time affect when this computation can be done (e.g., after obtaining the necessary information) , and when a result is useful (e.g., before some event occurs). This sensitivity to when computation is performed and when decisions are made is what makes these problems "time-dependent." A controller with more than one decision to make must trade off computation time, based on the expected effect on the system's behavior. We call the resulting meta-level scheduling problem a "deliberation-scheduling" problem. We have