A behavior-based architecture for intelligent controller design

Presents 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 response controller. The perceptor extracts the relevant symbolic information from the incoming continuous sensor signals which enable the execution of one of the behaviors, whereas the response controller 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 response controller, thus facilitating a better complexity management. The response controller uses the perceptor inputs to first compute the higher level activities, called behaviors, and next the corresponding lower level activities, called actions. The paper focuses on the response controller. We illustrate the intelligent control architecture by discussing its application to the design of intelligent controllers for autonomous underwater vehicles used for ocean sampling missions.