Autonomous robot controller with a dual strategy of decision making
R. Bhatt, D. Gaw, A. Maystel · 1988
A real-time system for the control of an autonomous vehicle consisting of a nested hierarchy of control modules. The focus is on the PILOT module which provides the real-time guidance of the system. It is responsible for the generation and tracking of dynamically feasible trajectories which follow the planned path given by the upper level (NAVIGATOR) and avoiding local obstacles. This paper describes a system of guidance algorithms of “pilot decision making” which incorporates different strategies of operation. Depending on the set of circumstances including the level of “informedness”, initial data, concrete environment, and so on, the “personality” of PILOT is being selected between two alternatives: A diligent and thoroughful strategist which tends to explore all available trajectories off-line and be prepared to follow one of them precisely.A hasty decision maker inclined to make a choice of solution in a rather reckless manner base upon short term alternatives not regarding long term consequences.Simulation shows that these two personalities support each other in a beneficial way. This paper is based on the concept of Nested Hierarchical Controller [1,2]. Intelligent Mobile Autonomous System (IMAS) is considered to be controlled by a Planner-Navigator-Pilot type of an intelligent controller [3]. Only Pilot's level is analyzed. The concept of behavioral duality is a development of our prior papers exploring this level of a multiresolutional controller [4-6]. Pilot level with behavioral duality was thoroughly simulated in the Laboratory of Applied Machine Intelligence and Robotics (LAMIR) of Drexel University, and applied in the IMAS-2 (Drexel-Dune-Buggy) which has been developed under the contract with US Army.