Methodology of Designing Multi-agent Robot Control Systems Utilising Hierarchical Petri Nets

Abstract

A robot system is designed as a set of embodied agents. An embodied agent is decomposed into cooperating subsystems. In our previous work activities of subsystems were defined by hierarchical finite state machines. With their states activities were associated. In that approach communication between subsystems was treated as an implementation issue. This paper represents activities of a robot system using hierarchical Petri nets with conditions. Such net is created by specifying consecutive layers: multi-agent robot system layer, agent layer, subsystem layer, behaviour layer and communication layer. This decomposition not only organizes in a systematic manner the development of a robot system, but also introduces a comprehensive description of concurrently acting subsystems. Based on those theoretical considerations, a tool was created for producing hierarchical Petri nets defining the model of a robotic system and enabling automatic generation of the robot controller code, resulting in a significant acceleration of the implementation phase. The capabilities of the tool are presented by the development of a robot controller performing a rudimentary task.

Utilisation of Embodied Agents in the Design of Smart Human–Computer Interfaces—A Case Study in Cyberspace Event Visualisation Control

“…Interaction with the physical environment is of secondary importance. On the other hand embodied agents directly interact with physical environments [34][35][36]. The integration of the two approaches is the subject of this research.…”

“…Guidance must be offered to the designer regarding how to produce both the general system architecture and the internal structure of the agent, as well as how to defined the activities of the agents. The papers [33][34][35] formulate the required methodology, providing the necessary level of detail, enabling the creation of satisfactory system specification. Hence that methodology has been followed here.…”

Robotic System Specification Methodology Based on Hierarchical Petri Nets

“…General networks, which are not limited to a specific domain, robotics in our case, significantly hamper the development of a robotic system, especially its modeling and analysis. Thus we introduce in this article a multi-agent robotic system specification methodology (RSSM), which is based on a specific hierarchical Petri net (HPN) [23], [24] tailored to fit the model of a multi-agent robotic system. The RSSM methodology is based on the architecture of an embodied agent [8], [13], [25].…”

“…The RSSM methodology is based on the architecture of an embodied agent [8], [13], [25]. However, in the mentioned papers the communication and computation model within the HPN [23], [24] were not treated comprehensively. In this article, we introduce the RSSM for defining the HPN, which describes all aspects of the structure and activities of a robotic system.…”

EARL—Embodied Agent-Based Robot Control Systems Modelling Language

“…. They utilised Finite State Machines, Hierarchical Finite State Machines and Petri Nets[40] to describe the system activities. This approach was used to develop the controllers of many different types of robots:…”