Architectures for Robot Control

Intelligent Robotics
2014/15

Bruno Lacerda
 This Lecture

Deliberative paradigm

- STRIPS

Reactive paradigm

- Behaviour-based architectures

Hybrid paradigm

The SMACH package (ROS)

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Architectures for Robot Control - Overview
 Deliberative Paradigms

Sense the world

Update world model and generate plan

- Knowledge representation + Automated reasoning

Execute planned action Bottleneck

Classical / Hierarchical Paradigm

Sense Plan Act

! 70s
! Focus on automated reasoning and knowledge representation
! STRIPS (Stanford Research Institute Problem Solver): Perfect
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 Deliberative Paradigms

Knowledge representation:

- Closed world assumption: World model contains everything

the robot needs to know

- Frame problem: How to model everything the robot needs

to know while keeping the size of the state space
manageable?
Classical / Hierarchical Paradigm

Sense Plan Act

! 70s
! Focus on automated reasoning and knowledge representation
! STRIPS (Stanford Research Institute Problem Solver): Perfect
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 Deliberative Paradigms

Planning:

- Exploring the possible states of the world to find a plan is

computationally expensive (e.g., STRIPS planning is NP-
complete)

Classical / Hierarchical Paradigm

Sense Plan Act

! 70s
! Focus on automated reasoning and knowledge representation
! STRIPS (Stanford Research Institute Problem Solver): Perfect
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 Deliberative Paradigms

Sensing and acting are disconnected:

- After sensing we always need to update the world model

and generate a plan

- No reactivity

Classical / Hierarchical Paradigm

Sense Plan Act

! 70s
! Focus on automated reasoning and knowledge representation
! STRIPS (Stanford Research Institute Problem Solver): Perfect
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 Shakey

Control architecture based on deliberative paradigm

Plan step is based on STRIPS

- Knowledge representation: First-order predicate logic

- Planning: Logic based planning

- Remember lectures on classical planning

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 Shakey

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 Reactive Paradigm

No world model; no planning

Direct mapping between sensor input and actuators

output

Very reactive to changes in sensor readings

(Radical) answer to shortcomings of deliberative paradigm

Reactive / Behavior-based Paradigm

Sense Act

! No models: The world is its own, best

model
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 Reactive Paradigm
AI researchers ... partition the problems they work on into two

components. The AI component, which they solve, and the non-

AI component which they dont solve. Typically AI succeeds by

defining the parts of the problem that are unsolved as not AI. The

principal mechanism for this partitioning is abstraction ... In AI,

abstraction is usually used to factor out all aspects of perception

and motor skills. I argue below that these are the hard problems

solved by intelligent systems, and further that the shape of solu-

tions to these problems constrains greatly the correct solutions of

the small pieces of intelligence which remain.

Rodney Brooks, Intelligence without representation, 1991,

Artificial Intelligence, Vol 47.

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 Behaviour-Based Architectures

Overall controller composed of two parts

- Task achieving controllers (e.g., simple state machines)

- Arbitrating controller (also task specific)

Controllers:

- Are reactive (map perception to action)

- Do not include world models, no planning

- Are only capable of performing one task each

Should perform it very efficiently

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Behaviour-Based Architectures

Push

Go through door

Arbitration
Approach object

Follow a wall

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 Behaviour-Based Architectures

Behaviours are the basic building block for robotics

actions, with an overall emergent behaviour obtained from
their arbitration

Behaviours support good software design principles due to

modularity

However, we have some assumptions:

- We need to be able to decompose the task into appropriate

primitive behaviours

- Each primitive behaviour requires only simple perceptual

and physical talents

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 Behaviour-Based Architectures

Different behaviour-
based architectures
Push
have different
approaches to
provide arbitration
Go through door

Arbitration
Approach object

Follow a wall

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 The Subsumption Architecture

Behaviours are networks of sensing and acting modules

(finite state machines)

Modules are grouped into layers of competence

Top layers can subsume lower layers

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 Herbert

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 Shortcomings of Behaviour-Based Architectures

Very task oriented - no flexibility

No world model means no memory or ability to reason

about optimal behaviours

Arbitrating a large set of behaviours properly is a

cumbersome and error-prone task

Complex tasks require arbitration of a large set of

behaviours

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 Hybrid Paradigm

World model, used for planning

Closed-loop, reactive control

Many architectures of today follow this paradigm

Hybrid Deliberative/reactive
Paradigm

Plan

Sense Act

! Combines advantages of previous paradigms

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! World model used for planning
 Reading

Deliberative paradigm

- [Fikes, Nilsson (1971)] STRIPS: a new approach to the

application of theorem proving to problem solving. Artificial
Intelligence, 2:189-208.

- http://www.sri.com/work/timeline-innovation/timeline.php?
timeline=computing-digital#!&innovation=shakey-the-robot

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 Reading

Reactive paradigm

- [R. A. Brooks]

(1986), A Robust Layer Control System for a Mobile Robot",

IEEE Journal of Robotics and Automation RA-2, 14-23.

(1987), "Planning is just a way of avoiding figuring out what

to do next", Technical report, MIT Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory.

(1991), "Intelligence Without Representation", Artificial

Intelligence 47 (1991) 139-15

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 Reading

General bibliography:

- Behavior-based Robotics [Arkin]

- Introduction to AI Robotics [Murphy]

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The SMACH package
 Overview

Python implementation of robot executive based on

hierarchical state machines

Also provides concurrency

See http://wiki.ros.org/smach

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