Behavior Based Robotics: Fundamentals and Applications

By Fouad Sabry

What Is Behavior Based Robotics

The field of robotics known as behavior-based robotics (BBR), sometimes known as behavioral robotics, is an approach that focuses on robots that are able to demonstrate complex-appearing behaviors despite having little internal variable state to represent its immediate surroundings. Behavioral robotics is primarily concerned with gradually correcting its actions by means of sensory-motor linkages.

How You Will Benefit

(I) Insights, and validations about the following topics:

Chapter 1: Behavior-based robotics

Chapter 2: Subsumption architecture

Chapter 3: BEAM robotics

Chapter 4: Bio-inspired computing

Chapter 5: Rodney Brooks

Chapter 6: Simultaneous localization and mapping

Chapter 7: Multi-agent system

Chapter 8: Neural network

Chapter 9: Intelligent agent

Chapter 10: Model-based reasoning

(II) Answering the public top questions about behavior based robotics.

(III) Real world examples for the usage of behavior based robotics in many fields.

(IV) 17 appendices to explain, briefly, 266 emerging technologies in each industry to have 360-degree full understanding of behavior based robotics' technologies.

Who This Book Is For

Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of behavior based robotics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Billion Knowledgeable
• Release date: Jul 6, 2023

Book preview

Chapter 1: Behavior-based robotics

Robots with complex-looking behaviors are the subject of behavior-based robotics (BBR), also known as behavioral robotics, a method in robotics that emphasizes robots that are able to demonstrate such behaviors while having limited internal variable state to represent its immediate surroundings.

By emulating biological processes, behavior-based robotics differentiates itself from more conventional AI. On contrast to the behaviorist approach, traditional AI relies on a predetermined procedure for problem solving that is grounded in the system's own representations of past occurrences. Behavior-based robotics depends on flexibility rather than preprogrammed calculations to solve a scenario. Because of this development, behavior-based robots are now often used in scientific studies and data collection.

Most behavior-based systems are also reactive, thus it doesn't matter what sort of surface the robot is walking on or what a chair looks like to them. Instead, the data comes straight from the robot's sensors. The robot then adjusts its movements over time to account for the changing conditions around it.

In contrast to their computing-intensive rivals, whose actions look quite intentional, behavior-based robots (BBR) often display more biologically-appearing behaviors. A BBR may exhibit the human characteristic of persistence despite its frequent blunders, repetition of behaviors, and bewildered appearance. These behaviors have led to numerous comparisons of BBRs to insects. Some argue that BBRs are a model of all intelligence, while others argue that they are instances of weak AI.

Most behavior-based robots have just the most basic capabilities pre-installed. They are provided with a behavioral repertoire that specifies which behaviors to employ and when, such as obstacle avoidance and battery charging. Behavior-based robots don't construct world models; they just respond to their surroundings and any issues they encounter. When faced with a challenge, they use what they've learned from their prior experiences and what they know about themselves behaviorally to come up with.

Rodney Brooks, together with his students and collaborators, pioneered the application of the subsumption architecture in the construction of wheeled and legged robots in the 1980s, laying the groundwork for the field of behavior-based robotics. Because of Brooks's humorously titled articles, the human aspects of his robots, and the inexpensive cost of constructing such robots, the behavior-based method became more popular.

Whether intentional or not, Brooks's work expands upon two earlier landmarks in the behavior-based approach. W. Grey Walter, an English scientist with a background in neurological research, constructed a pair of vacuum tube-based robots with simple but successful behavior-based control systems in the 1950s, which were shown during the 1951 Festival of Britain.

The second important work is Vehicles - Experiments in Synthetic Psychology, written by Valentino Braitenberg in 1984. (MIT Press). He then goes on to discuss a series of thought experiments designed to show how seemingly complicated emotions like fear and love may be the outcome of very simple sensor/motor linkages.

The BEAM robotics community has continued to develop BBR after Mark Tilden's first work. After seeing how one microcontroller per leg worked in Brooks' tests, Tilden was motivated to further lower the computing needs for walking mechanisms, making them feasible using logic chips, transistor-based electronics, and analog circuit design.

Extending behavior-based robotics to teams of many robots is an alternative line of research. In this research, we want to create basic general processes that lead to coordinated group behavior, whether this coordination is tacit or explicit.

{End Chapter 1}

Chapter 2: Subsumption architecture

The subsumption architecture was widely used in the 1980s and 1990s and is a reactive robotic design closely linked to the field of behavior-based robotics. Rodney Brooks and his coworkers coined the phrase in 1986. Subsumption's impact on autonomous robots and other areas of real-time artificial intelligence has been substantial.

To counter classical artificial intelligence, the subsumption architecture was suggested, or GOFAI.

As opposed to using abstract concepts to direct actions,, subsumption architecture couples sensory information to action selection in an intimate and bottom-up fashion.: 8–12, 15–16

When compared to conventional AI, subsumption architecture takes a very different approach to the intelligence issue.

Disappointed with the results of programs attempting to mimic the human mind conceptually, such as Shakey the robot, Rodney Brooks began developing robots with an alternative theory of intelligence, mimicking the workings of the subconscious.

Instead of simulating intelligence by playing with symbols,, this approach is aimed at real-time interaction and viable responses to a dynamic lab or office environment.: 130–131

There were four main concepts that guided the mission::

Situatedness — A core tenet of situated AI is the concept of a human-like response time for a robot to its surroundings. According to Brooks, a mobile robot in a particular location shouldn't build its own symbolic representation of the environment and then act on that representation. He argues that instead of trying to model the environment, it is better to engage with it directly via well-designed perception-to-action