research-article

Improving the Parallel Execution of Behavior Trees

Authors:

Michele Colledanchise,

Lorenzo NataleAuthors Info & Claims

2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)

Pages 7103 - 7110

https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2018.8593504

Published: 01 October 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Behavior Trees (BTs) have become a popular framework for designing controllers of autonomous agents in the computer game and in the robotics industry. One of the key advantages of BTs lies in their modularity, where independent modules can be composed to create more complex ones. In the classical formulation of BTs, modules can be composed using one of the three operators: Sequence, Fallback, and Parallel. The Parallel operator is rarely used despite its strong potential against other control architectures such as Finite State Machines. This is due to the fact that concurrent actions may lead to unexpected problems similar to the ones experienced in concurrent programming. In this paper, we outline how to tackle the aforementioned problem by introducing Concurrent BTs (CBTs) as a generalization of BTs in which we include the notions of progress and resource usage. We show how CBTs allow safe concurrent executions of actions and we analyze the approach from a mathematical standpoint. To illustrate the use of CBTs, we provide a set of use cases in realistic robotics scenarios.

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Cited By

Biggar OZamani MShames I(2022)On Modularity in Reactive Control Architectures, with an Application to Formal VerificationACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems10.1145/35116066:2(1-36)Online publication date: 11-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3511606
Iovino MScukins EStyrud JÖgren PSmith C(2022)A survey of Behavior Trees in robotics and AIRobotics and Autonomous Systems10.1016/j.robot.2022.104096154:COnline publication date: 1-Aug-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.robot.2022.104096
Serbinowska SJohnson T(2022)BehaVerify: Verifying Temporal Logic Specifications for Behavior TreesSoftware Engineering and Formal Methods10.1007/978-3-031-17108-6_19(307-323)Online publication date: 26-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-031-17108-6_19

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Improving the Parallel Execution of Behavior Trees

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cover image Guide Proceedings

2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)

Oct 2018

7818 pages

Copyright © 2018.

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IEEE Press

Publication History

Published: 01 October 2018

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Cited By

Biggar OZamani MShames I(2022)On Modularity in Reactive Control Architectures, with an Application to Formal VerificationACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems10.1145/35116066:2(1-36)Online publication date: 11-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3511606
Iovino MScukins EStyrud JÖgren PSmith C(2022)A survey of Behavior Trees in robotics and AIRobotics and Autonomous Systems10.1016/j.robot.2022.104096154:COnline publication date: 1-Aug-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.robot.2022.104096
Serbinowska SJohnson T(2022)BehaVerify: Verifying Temporal Logic Specifications for Behavior TreesSoftware Engineering and Formal Methods10.1007/978-3-031-17108-6_19(307-323)Online publication date: 26-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-031-17108-6_19

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