Modeling and Programming Devices and Web Agents

This paper integrates research in robot programming and reasoning about action with research in model-based reasoning about physical systems to provide a capability for modeling and programming devices and web agents, which we term model-based programming. Model-based programs are reusable highlevel programs that capture the procedural knowledge of howto accomplish a task, without specifying all the device- and web-service-specific details. Model-based programs must be instantiated in the context of a model of a specific device/web service and state of the world. The instantiated programs are simply sequences of actions, which can be executed by an appropriate agent to control the behavior of the system. The separation of control and model enables reuse of model-based programs across classes of related devices and services whose configuration changes as the result of replacement, redesign, reconfiguration or component failure. Additionally, the logical formalism underlying model-based programming enables verification of properties such as safety, program existence, and goal achievement. Our model-based programs are realized by exploiting research on the logic programming language Golog, together with research on representing actions and state constraints in the situation calculus, and modeling physical systems using state constraints.