Incorporating artificial intelligence in shopping assistance robot using Markov Decision Process

There are many challenges involved in the realization of a shopping assistance robot (SAR). The specific challenge addressed in this paper is that of incorporating artificial intelligence or decision making capability in such robot. Markov Decision Process (MDP) based formulation of the problem has been presented for this purpose. The major advantage of the MDP based approach over simple search based artificial intelligence techniques is that it can incorporate uncertainty. The proposed MDP model has been solved for optimal policy using value iteration algorithm. Furthermore, it has been shown how the reward function influences the structure of the resulting policy. The results show encouraging potential in the use of MDP based formulation for SAR.