Chapter 8. Formalizing Motion

Key Topics

• Background Review

• Sketching Possible Options

• Rationalizing

• Proposed Specification

The preceding stages of the development are rather intuitive, providing a good base upon which to build. Before we can program an artifical intelligence (AI) component to perform navigation, however, we need to decide what this task consists of formally by designing an interface with the platform. This specification phase involves defining the animat, the information it receives about the environment, and how it can act upon that to achieve movement. To do this, we need to specify the inputs, outputs, and context of the problem.

Essentially, this chapter covers the following necessary steps:

• Briefly review existing approaches to navigation.

• Sketch all possible specifications in one creative burst!

• Discuss the options to pick out the best one.

• Establish a formal specification that describes everything involved.

• Select a representation for the inputs and the outputs.

After we have done this, we'll finally have a code skeleton ready for the AI solution to be inserted.