An object-oriented implementation of behavior-based control architecture

Abstract

An object-oriented approach to behavior-based control architecture for autonomous mobile robots as presented. Instead of traditional implementations of the architecture with proprietary programming languages which resulted in slow execution speed and poor hardware compatibility, the C++ language is used and an optimal scheduling algorithm is proposed for fast and guaranteed response time. Each behavior module is compiled separately and loaded at run-time using dynamic binding to improve modularity and expandability. A vector valued representation of output signals is also proposed to arbitrate conflicting signals properly without losing any information. The proposed method is implemented and applied to control a laboratory developed autonomous mobile robot and tested in real-time.