A behavior-based architecture for robots using real-time vision

A description is given of the Independent Agents Architecture, designed for building behavior-based robots which make use of sophisticated, computationally expensive sensory modalities. Systems built using this architecture have three layers corresponding to perception, behavior, and motor control. The use of a shared perception layer prevents unnecessary redundancy in the processing of sensor data. Robotic tasks are decomposed into independent stimulus/response behaviors, each of which is implemented by a separate agent. The formalism of stimulus/response spaces is introduced to model these sensorimotor behaviors. This formalism provides a method to analyze when behavioral systems are free from potential action conflicts. In addition, it is demonstrated that it is possible to build a robotic system which performs dynamic tasks through the use of qualitative sensorimotor behaviors instead of mathematical models of the physical world. Juggler, a behavior-based balloon-bouncing robot, is an example of such a system