Model-Based Reconfiguration of Schema-Based Reactive Control Architectures

Reactive methods of control get caught in local minima. Fortunately schema-based reac-tive control systems have built-in redundancy that enables multiple conngurations with different modes. We describe a model-based method that exploits this redundancy, and, under certain conditions, reconngures schema-based reactive control systems trapped in be-havioral cycles due to the presence of local minima. The qualitative model speciies the functions and modes of the perceptual and motor schemas, and represents the reactive architecture as a structure-behavior-function model. The model-based method monitors the reactive processing, detects failures in the form of be-havioral cycles, analyzes the processing trace, identiies potential modiications, and reconng-ures the reactive architecture. We report on experiments with a simulated robot navigating a complex space.