Cooperation without Deliberation: A Minimal Behavior-based Approach to Multi-Robot Teams

While terminology and some concepts of behavior-based robotics have become widespread, the central ideas are often lost as researchers try to scale behavior to higher levels of complexity. "Hybrid systems" with model-based strategies that plan in terms of behaviors rather than simple actions have become common for higher-level behavior. We claim that a strict behavior-based approach can scale to higher levels of complexity than many robotics researchers assume, and that the resulting systems are in many cases more efficient and robust than those that rely on "classical AI" deliberative approaches. Our focus is on systems of cooperative autonomous robots in dynamic environments. We will discuss both claims that deliberation and explicit communication are necessary to cooperation and systems that cooperate only through environmental interaction. In this context we introduce three design principles for complex cooperative behavior--minimalism, statelessness and tolera...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 1999
• Where: AI
• Authors: Barry Brian Werger
• Keywords: AI 1999, Artificial Intelligence, Behavior, Strict Behavior-based Approach, Systems