Towards a unified behavior trees framework for robot control

Abstract

This paper presents a unified framework for Behavior Trees (BTs), a plan representation and execution tool. The available literature lacks the consistency and mathematical rigor required for robotic and control applications. Therefore, we approach this problem in two steps: first, reviewing the most popular BT literature exposing the aforementioned issues; second, describing our unified BT framework along with equivalence notions between BTs and Controlled Hybrid Dynamical Systems (CHDSs). This paper improves on the existing state of the art as it describes BTs in a more accurate and compact way, while providing insight about their actual representation capabilities. Lastly, we demonstrate the applicability of our framework to real systems scheduling open-loop actions in a grasping mission that involves a NAO robot and our BT library.