Dynamic Composition and Execution of Behaviors in a Hierarchical Control System

Thomas L. Skillman; Ken Hopping

doi:10.1117/12.969896

1 March 1990 Dynamic Composition and Execution of Behaviors in a Hierarchical Control System

Thomas L. Skillman, Ken Hopping

Proceedings Volume 1195, Mobile Robots IV; (1990) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.969896
Event: 1989 Symposium on Visual Communications, Image Processing, and Intelligent Robotics Systems, 1989, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Abstract

The behavior of a system can be defined as its trajectory in state space. A system's behavior comes about through the interaction of its control law with the plant dynamics. In systems where the plant dynamics vary considerably a constant control law can lead to varying behaviors. A more consistent operation of a system can be attained by specifying the desired behavior and then, based on the current plant dynamics, selecting the appropriate control law. Assuming that only the lowest level of a hierarchical controller is responsible for selecting the appropriate control law, the rest of the hierarchy needs only to represent and operate on abstracted state spaces and behaviors. Here a hierarchical control system is presented that operates as a hierarchy of behaviors, rather than control laws, to achieve adaptive real-time control performance. A planning system at each level of the hierarchy composes sequences of behaviors that will implement a more abstract behavior specified by the next higher level. The first intermediate goal state generated by a plan is passed to the next lower level of the hierarchy as the goal state, and the planning sequence repeated. A set of relations is used to translate between the state abstractions at different levels. At the bottom level the behavior is mapped into a control law that will achieve the behavior when applied to the current plant dynamics. The system has been prototyped and demonstrated on a wheeled mobile robot platform with sonar range sensing.

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Thomas L. Skillman and Ken Hopping "Dynamic Composition and Execution of Behaviors in a Hierarchical Control System", Proc. SPIE 1195, Mobile Robots IV, (1 March 1990); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.969896

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