A Reactive Robot System for Find and Fetch Tasks in an Outdoor
Environment  R. Peter Bonasso, H. James Antonisse, Marc G. Slack
This paper describes the results of using a reactive control
software architecture for a mobile robot retrieval task in an
outdoor environment. The software architecture draws from the
ideas of universal plans and subsumption’s layered control,
producing reaction plans that exploit low-level competences as
operators. The retrieval task requires the robot to locate and
navigate to a donor agent, receive an object from the donor, and
return. The implementation employs the concept of navigation
templates (NaTs) to construct and update an obstacle space from
which navigation plans are developed and continually revised.
Selective perception is employed among an infrared beacon
detector which determines the bearing to the donor, a real-time
stereo vision system which obtains the range, and ultrasonic
sensors which monitor for obstacles en route. The perception
routines achieve a robust, c