A self-organizing, hybrid PDE-ODE structure for motion control in informationally-deprived situations

Navigators are motion controllers that are required to carry out the task of solving an ill-posed problem. This paper discusses the construction of a hybrid control structure that would enable an agent to successfully deal with the informationally-deprived situation that is described above. The control structure has an evolutionary nature that allows for autonomous structural adaptation of the control relying only on a sequentially acquired sensory input as a source of information. It also has the ability to integrate any available a priori information in its database, regardless of its fragmentation or sparsity, in the planning process to accelerate convergence. The structure is based on a bottom-up, artificial life approach to behavior synthesis that allows the integration of experience along with synergy as drivers of the action selection process. Theoretical development of the structure, a realization, and simulation results are provided.