Real-time knowledge-based control systems

This special section is the outgrowth of a workshop on real-time knowledge-based control systems, held during the 1990 national conference of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). The workshop was motivated by the recognition that constructing robotic systems capable of autonomous, flexible, intelligent behavior is an inherently interdisciplinary task. In particular, professionals from the fields of artificial intelligence (AI), control theory, process control and real-time scheduling were invited. To facilitate communication among these fields, the workshop organizers decided to focus on software design principles for real-time systems, and so sought out those who had built working systems and could express their experiences in terms of techniques they had tested and/or refuted.