Increasing Modularity of UAV Control Systems using Computer Game Behavior Trees
Petter Ögren · 2012
In this paper, we argue that the modularity, reusability and complexity of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) guidance and control systems might be improved by using a Behavior Tree (BT) architecture. BTs are a particular kind of Hybrid Dynamical Systems (HDS), where the state transitions of the HDS are implicitly encoded in a tree structure, instead of explicitly stated in transition maps. In the gaming industry, BTs have gained a lot of interest, and are now replacing HDS in the control architecture of many automated in-game opponents. Below, we explore the relationship between HDS and BTs. We show that any HDS can be written as a BT and that many common UAV control constructs are quite naturally formulated as BTs. Finally, we discuss the positive implications of making the above mentioned state transitions implicit in the BTs.