Proposes a hybrid control architecture which combines the key features of the two well-known robot control architectures; hierarchical and behavioral-based. The overall control architecture consists of three layers, i.e. the high-level planner, the middle plan executor, and the lower level monitor and behavior-based controller. In the planned task, only one behavior module is chosen by the logical coordinator in the plan executor according to the way point bin. In the exceptional situation, the central controller in the plan executor issues an additional control command to reach the planned way point. Several simulations and experiments with an autonomous mobile robot show that the proposed architecture enables the robot controller to achieve the multiple sequential goals even in a dynamic and uncertain environment.

An object-oriented approach to behavior-based control architecture for autonomous mobile robots as presented. Instead of traditional implementations of the architecture with proprietary programming languages which resulted in slow execution speed and poor hardware compatibility, the C++ language is used and an optimal scheduling algorithm is proposed for fast and guaranteed response time. Each behavior module is compiled separately and loaded at run-time using dynamic binding to improve modularity and expandability. A vector valued representation of output signals is also proposed to arbitrate conflicting signals properly without losing any information. The proposed method is implemented and applied to control a laboratory developed autonomous mobile robot and tested in real-time.