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Ayllu: Distributed Port-Arbitrated Behavior-Based Control

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Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems 4

Abstract

Distributed control of teams of mobile robots presents a number of unique challenges, including unreliable communication, real world task and safety constraints, scalability, dynamic reconfigurability, heterogenous platforms, and lack of standardized tools or techniques. Similar problems plagued development of single robot applications until the “behavior-based” approach introduced new control techniques based on port-arbitrated behaviors (PAB). Though there are now a number of systems for behavior-based control of single robots, the potential for distributing such control across robots for multi-agent control has not been fully realized. This paper presents Ayllu 1, a language for distributed multi-robot behavioral control. Ayllu allows standard PAB interaction (message passing, inhibition, and suppression) to take place over IP networks, and extends the PAB paradigm to provide scalability. We give a brief overview of the Broadcast of Local Eligibility, a general technique for constructing such scalable systems in Ayllu, and survey some of the research projects and applications implemented using Ayllu.

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© 2000 Springer-Verlag Tokyo

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Werger, B.B. (2000). Ayllu: Distributed Port-Arbitrated Behavior-Based Control. In: Parker, L.E., Bekey, G., Barhen, J. (eds) Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems 4. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-67919-6_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-67919-6_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Tokyo

  • Print ISBN: 978-4-431-67991-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-4-431-67919-6

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