Operator: intend

Operator Overview:

Intention operators are one type of PEACTIDM operators, which in NTD-Soar have been reserved for those operators which perform motor actions. As Allen describes them in Unified Theories of Cognition: "Intend is the function of committing to a response." (more)

Operator Proposal:

In this domain, intention proposals are primarily learned. The search-for-step, scan-page, and scan-step problem-spaces can all result in intention operator proposals. These preferences are generally returned to the top by the production generic*ao*subspace-ACTI, which appears in generic.soar6.

There are two primary types of intention operators, namely eye movements and hand movements. Hand movements arise exclusively from the flip-page operator of the search-for-step space, and have the result of flipping the OMI page. Eye movements can arise from any of the above spaces, and serve to get the necessary information into the fovea for more in-depth processing.

Operator Application:

The operator application generally results in output to a motor link, either ^motor-link-eyes or ^motor-link-hand, which is implemented in the I/O code for the simulation in the file motor.c. The other effect the operator has is to remove any existing information about the visual fixation location, and replace it with appropriate new information if the new information is available as part of the operator. These operators may utilize a peculiar sort of decoding productions, which know how to convert from task-specific terminology (columns of the OMI, for example) into motor-specific terminology (cartesian coordinates). These productions may be seen in decode.soar6.

Operator Reconsider:

Automatic when output is sent to the motor link.