An Overview on Behaviour-Based Methods for AUV Control

Abstract

Traditionally, deliberative reasoning methods based on a world model have been used to guide Autonomous Vehicles. Nevertheless, due to serious problems when dealing with complex and changing environments the alternative approach of reactive architectures appeared, directly coupling perception and action without any world representation. This paper describes the characteristics and variants of reactive architectures as well as four of the most suitable ones to guide Autonomous Underwater Vehicles: Schema-based approach, Subsumption, Process Description Language and Action Selection Dynamics. Each architecture is described and evaluated using an underwater simulator with an AUV model.