A behavior-based architecture for the design of intelligent controllers for autonomous systems

Describes a behavior-based intelligent control architecture for designing controllers which, based on their observation of sensor signals compute the discrete control actions. The behavior-based approach yields an intelligent controller which is a cascade of a perceptor, and a responder. The perceptor builds internal representations as object class instances of the external world as detected by the sensors. The existence of class instances with certain properties enables the responder to react to them by executing appropriate behaviors. The responder is a discrete event system that computes the discrete control actions by executing one of the enabled behaviors. The behavioral approach additionally yields a hierarchical two layered responder, thus facilitating a better management of complexity. The responder uses the perceptor inputs to first compute the higher level activities, called behaviors, and next the corresponding lower level activities, called actions.