Planning for Everything: The Design of Paths and Goals

by Peter Morville

I wish to build completely autonomous mobile agents that co-exist in the world with humans, and are seen by humans as intelligent beings in their own right. I will call such agents Creatures.[25] Rodney insisted that a Creature must be able to pursue multiple goals, adapt to changes in its environment, and have a purpose. So, like an insect or a Trukese navigator, a Creature is an intelligent agent driven by an objective, not a fixed plan. In pursuit of his goal, Rodney co-founded iRobot and to the delight of cats around the world, created the first successful, domestic robot, Roomba. These vacuums don’t map rooms but rely on sensors and algorithms such as spiral cleaning, room crossing, wall following, and random walk angle changing after bumping into an object. Their unplanned paths aren’t efficient, but they are adaptive and surprisingly effective.