A Case Study in the Behavior-Oriented Design of Autonomous Agents

Abstract

The paper documents a case study in the design and implementation of a robotic multi-agent system. It illustrates known design guidelines, namely that the physics of the environment must be exploited, that behavior is the result from the interaction dynamics between the agent and the environment, and that emergent behavior can and must be utilised whenever possible. But the case study also challenges certain views, such as the subsumption architecture, the need for an action selection mechanism, the goal-oriented design methodology dominating the literature on planning, and the algorithmic style of writing control programs. Alternatives are explored in the form of a cooperative, parallel, behavior-oriented design. 1 Introduction An autonomous agent is a physical system that has its own resources to operate independently in a dynamically changing real world environment. The resources include energy, computational power, sensors, actuators, and body parts. A multi-agent system is an e...