An architecture for dynamic, rational, mobile agents

We are exploring the extent to which we can build autonomous, mobile agents with sufficiently wide behavioural repertoires to be able to tackle complex tasks in real-world domains. Our research is developing a layered architecture within which to characterise and implement such agents. The central problem we have to tackle is the ability to build agents that can perceive, plan and act under pressure of time. Our architecture tackles the planning problem by incorporating reflective or deliberative behaviour with reactive or nondeliberative ones. The balance between these varieties of behaviour is the tricky thing to get right. In this paper we will detail our hardware architecture and describe progress in the reactive components of our system. We will outline a number of behaviours that we have obtained. Finally we will outline our approach to the incorporation of deliberative planning and indicate the task environment in which we intend to evaluate our approach.