A Framework for Goal Generation and Management

Goal-directed behaviour is often viewed as an essential char- acteristic of an intelligent system, but mechanisms to generate and manage goals are often overlooked. This paper addresses this by presenting a framework for autonomous goal gener- ation and selection. The framework has been implemented as part of an intelligent mobile robot capable of exploring unknown space and determining the category of rooms au- tonomously. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach by comparing the performance of two versions of our inte- grated system: one with the framework, the other without. This investigation leads us conclude that such a framework is desirable for an integrated intelligent system because it re- duces the complexity of the problems that must be solved by other behaviour-generation mechanisms, it makes goal- directed behaviour more robust in the face of a dynamic and unpredictable environments, and it provides an entry point for domain-specific knowledge in a more general system.