Behaviour-based robot program invariance

Abstract

Despite the numerous technical improvements, robot programming is still today a very tedious activity requiring considerable efforts for fine tuning programs written off-line. Moreover, such programs are usually not particularly portable from one robot to another, sometimes even when the robots are from the same maker.The issue addressed in the work reported here is how to overcome these shortcomings. In this respect, the argument is to develop programs within the behaviour-based assembly paradigm which views tasks in terms of goal-achieving entities (behaviours). The focus on the description of a task more than its implementation is the key to generality and portability. As shown with the aid of two similar, but not identical, assembly benchmarks, behavioural programs are independent of any specificity of each assembly kit and can, indeed, be constructed using the very same code.