Using hierarchical dynamical systems to control reactive behavior

Abstract

This paper describes the mechanical and electrical design, as well as the control strategy, of the FU-Fighters robots, a F180 league team that won the second place at RoboCup’99. It explains how we solved the computer vision and radio communication problems that arose in the course of the project. The paper mainly discusses the hierarchical control architecture used to generate the behavior of individual agents and the team. Our reactive approach is based on the Dual Dynamics framework developed by H. Jäger, in which activation dynamics determines when a behavior is allowed to influence the actuators, and a target dynamics establishes how this is done. We extended the original framework by adding a third module, the perceptual dynamics. Here, the readings of fast changing sensors are aggregated temporarily to form complex, slow changing percepts. We describe the bottom-up design of behaviors and illustrate our approach using examples from the RoboCup domain.