Behavior Coordination Mechanisms - State-of-the-art

In behavior based robotics the control of a robot is shared between a set of purposive perception action units called behaviors Based on selective sensory information each behav ior produces immediate reactions to control the robot with respect to a particular objective i e a narrow aspect of the robot s overall task such as obstacle avoidance or wall following Behaviors with di erent and possibly incommensurable objectives may produce con icting actions that are seemingly irreconcilable Thus a major issue in the design of behavior based control systems is the formulation of e ective mechanisms for coordination of the behaviors activities into strategies for rational and coherent behavior This is known as the action selection problem also refereed to as the behavior coordination problem and is the primary focus of this overview paper Numerous action selection mechanisms have been proposed over the last decade and the main objective of this document is to give a qualitative overview of these approaches