Multi-Strategy Learning of Robotic Behaviours via Qualitative Reasoning

When given a task, an autonomous agent must plan a series of actions to perform in order to complete the goal. In robotics, planners face additional challenges as the domain is typically large (even infinite) continuous, noisy, and non- deterministic. Typically stochastic planning has been used to solve robotic control tasks. Such planners have been very successful in their various domains. The downside to such approaches is that the models and planners are highly specialised to a single control task. To change the control task, requires developing an entirely new planner. The research in my thesis focuses on the problem of specialisation in continuous, noisy and non-deterministic robotic domains by developing a more generic planner. It builds on previous research in the area, specifically using the technique of Multi-Strategy Learning. Qualitative Modelling and Qualitative Reasoning is used to provide the generality, from which specific, Quantitative controllers can be quickly learnt. The resulting system is applied to a real world robotic platform for rough terrain navigation.