Desiderata for Planning Systems in General-Purpose Service Robots

Maya Cakmak; Nick Walker; Peter Stone; Yuqian Jiang

arxiv: 1907.02300 · v1 · pith:NR7GVR36new · submitted 2019-07-04 · 💻 cs.RO

Desiderata for Planning Systems in General-Purpose Service Robots

Nick Walker , Yuqian Jiang , Maya Cakmak , Peter Stone This is my paper

Pith reviewed 2026-05-25 09:43 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification 💻 cs.RO

keywords service robotsplanning systemsdesideratahuman-robot interactionrobust fallbackgeneral-purpose robotsknowledge representationposition paper

0 comments

The pith

Planning systems for general-purpose service robots must support natural human interfaces and robust fallback methods.

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

This position paper proposes a set of desiderata for planning and reasoning systems to support general-purpose service robots. The proposals draw directly from the authors' experience deploying robots in office and home settings. The desiderata place special weight on enabling natural human interfaces and on providing robust recovery options when interactions with people or the environment break down. If these requirements are met, planning systems could help robots handle a broader range of user requests with greater reliability. The paper also identifies existing research that already addresses pieces of these requirements.

Core claim

The authors argue that inconsistent assumptions about users, environments, and robot systems slow progress toward planning for general-purpose service robots, and that a shared list of desiderata focused on natural human interfaces and robust fallbacks when interactions fail would help unify and advance the field.

What carries the argument

The proposed desiderata, a list of required capabilities for planning and reasoning systems derived from practical service-robot deployments.

If this is right

Planning systems can accommodate natural instructions from users instead of requiring rigid formats.
Robots gain methods to recover when human interactions or environmental conditions do not match expectations.
Systems become better suited to the variable demands of home and office tasks.
Existing planning techniques can be compared against a common set of goals for general-purpose robots.

Where Pith is reading between the lines

These are editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

The desiderata could be used as evaluation criteria when testing new planning algorithms on physical robots.
Trying to meet the full list in settings outside homes and offices would reveal whether the listed requirements generalize.
Robot developers might prioritize certain planning features by checking how well their current systems match the proposed items.

Load-bearing premise

The authors' experience with service robots in office and home environments is representative enough to define essential features for general-purpose service robots across broader settings.

What would settle it

A planning system built to satisfy all the listed desiderata that still cannot let a robot complete a wide variety of user-requested tasks in typical home or office conditions would show the desiderata are insufficient.

read the original abstract

General-purpose service robots are expected to undertake a broad range of tasks at the request of users. Knowledge representation and planning systems are essential to flexible autonomous robots, but the field lacks a unified perspective on which features are essential for general-purpose service robots. Progress towards planning and reasoning for general-purpose service robots is hindered by differing assumptions about users, the environment, and the overall robot system. In this position paper, we propose desiderata for planning and reasoning systems to promote general-purpose service robots. Each proposed item draws on our experience with research on service robots in the office and home and on the demands of these environments. Our desiderata emphasize support for natural human-interfaces as well as for robust fallback methods when interactions with humans and the environment fail. We highlight relevant work towards these goals.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Desk Editor's Note private letter to a colleague

Position paper compiles desiderata for service robot planning from office/home experience but offers no argument for why those settings represent general-purpose demands.

read the letter

The core of this paper is a position statement that pulls together a list of desiderata for planning and reasoning systems in general-purpose service robots. The items come from the authors' work in offices and homes, with emphasis on natural human interfaces and fallback methods when interactions fail. It also flags some existing research that touches on these points. That synthesis is the main contribution, and it can serve as a practical checklist for people building systems in similar settings. The writing stays grounded in real deployment issues rather than abstract theory, which is a plus for this kind of paper. No new algorithms, data, or proofs appear, as expected for a position piece. The citation pattern is straightforward and points to relevant prior work without circularity. The soft spot is the leap from two specific environments to general-purpose robots. The abstract and stress-test note both indicate the desiderata rest on office and home experience alone, with no cross-domain comparisons, citations to other settings, or argument that those cases capture the range of users, failures, or interfaces elsewhere. That assumption stays unexamined, so the claim to broader relevance is weaker than it could be. This paper is for researchers in service robotics planning who want a focused list of features to consider in their own systems. A reader already working on human-robot interaction or robust execution might get some value from the framing. It deserves peer review so the community can test whether the list needs additions or adjustments based on wider experience.

Referee Report

1 major / 1 minor

Summary. The manuscript is a position paper proposing a set of desiderata for planning and reasoning systems to support general-purpose service robots. Each desideratum is drawn from the authors' experience with service robots operating in office and home environments, with emphasis on natural human interfaces and robust fallback methods for handling failures in human-robot or robot-environment interactions. Relevant prior work is highlighted to illustrate progress toward these goals.

Significance. The paper supplies a unified perspective on planning-system features that could help reduce differing assumptions across robotics research. Its grounding in stated practical experience with real deployments is a strength for a position paper and may usefully inform system design if the scope of the claimed generality is clarified.

major comments (1)

[Abstract] Abstract: the central claim that the listed desiderata are appropriate for general-purpose service robots rests on the representativeness of office and home settings, yet no cross-domain comparison, additional citations, or argument is supplied to establish that these two environments capture the range of users, failure modes, and interface demands arising in other domains (e.g., hospitals or retail).

minor comments (1)

The abstract and introduction could more explicitly enumerate the proposed desiderata (e.g., via a short numbered list) to improve readability before the detailed discussion.

Simulated Author's Rebuttal

1 responses · 0 unresolved

We thank the referee for the constructive feedback on our position paper. We address the major comment below and are prepared to make revisions to clarify scope where appropriate.

read point-by-point responses

Referee: [Abstract] Abstract: the central claim that the listed desiderata are appropriate for general-purpose service robots rests on the representativeness of office and home settings, yet no cross-domain comparison, additional citations, or argument is supplied to establish that these two environments capture the range of users, failure modes, and interface demands arising in other domains (e.g., hospitals or retail).

Authors: The manuscript is a position paper that explicitly grounds its proposals in the authors' direct experience with deployed service robots in office and home settings, as stated in the abstract and introduction. These environments were chosen because they represent common, long-term deployments involving natural human-robot interaction and frequent failures in both human and environmental interfaces—the core focus of the desiderata. We do not claim these settings exhaustively cover all possible domains; rather, the desiderata are offered as a starting point to unify assumptions across the field. That said, we agree the abstract could better signal the illustrative nature of the examples. We will revise the abstract and add a short clarifying paragraph in the introduction noting that while office/home settings highlight key challenges (e.g., natural language, robust recovery), domains such as hospitals or retail may introduce additional constraints, and we will reference a small number of relevant citations from those areas to illustrate potential extensions. revision: partial

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

No circularity: position paper states desiderata from experience without derivations or reductions

full rationale

This is a position paper proposing desiderata for planning systems based on the authors' experience with service robots in office and home settings. No equations, predictions, fitted parameters, or derivation chains exist. The text explicitly attributes each item to experience and environmental demands without any self-referential reduction, self-citation load-bearing, or renaming of results. The generalization concern raised in the skeptic note is a question of representativeness and external validity, not circularity per the rules. The paper is self-contained as a set of recommendations and receives the default non-finding.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

0 free parameters · 0 axioms · 0 invented entities

This is a position paper with no mathematical content, fitted parameters, or new entities. Claims rest solely on the authors' stated domain experience in robotics research.

pith-pipeline@v0.9.0 · 5662 in / 1065 out tokens · 35280 ms · 2026-05-25T09:43:32.468304+00:00 · methodology

discussion (0)

Forward citations

Cited by 1 Pith paper

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

Bridging the Disciplinary Gap in Explainable AI: From Abstract Desiderata to Concrete Tasks
cs.CY 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0

The authors introduce a taxonomy with target, functional role, and mode of justification axes plus a framework that decomposes abstract XAI desiderata into concrete benchmarkable tasks via identified dependency structures.