Behavior Coordination Mechanisms - State-of-the-art

Abstract

In behavior-based robotics the control of a robot is shared between a set of purposive perception-action units, called behaviors. Based on selective sensory information, each behavior produces immediate reactions to control the robot with respect to a particular objective, i.e., a narrow aspect of the robot's overall task such as obstacle avoidance or wall following. Behaviors with different and possibly incommensurable objectives may produce conflicting actions that are seemingly irreconcilable. Thus a major issue in the design of behavior-based control systems is the formulation of effective mechanisms for coordination of the behaviors' activities into strategies for rational and coherent behavior. This is known as the action selection problem (also refereed to as the behavior coordination problem) and is the primary focus of this overview paper. Numerous action selection mechanisms have been proposed over the last decade and the main objective of this document is to give a qualitat...