Dynamic Schema Hierarchies for an Autonomous Robot

Abstract

This paper proposes a behavior based architecture for robot control which uses dynamic hierarchies of small schemas to generate autonomous behavior. Each schema is a ow of execution with a target, can be turned on and o , and has several parameters which tune its behavior. Low level schemas are woken up and modulated by upper level schemas, forming a hierarchy for a given behavior. At any time there are several awake schemas per level, running concurrently, but only one of them is activated by environment perception. When none or more than one schema wants to be activated then upper level schema is called for arbitration. This paper also describes an implementation of the architecture and its use on a real robot