Towards a hybrid software architecture and multi-agent approach for autonomous robot software

Abstract

To support robust plan execution of autonomous robots in dynamic environments, autonomous robot software should include adaptive and reactive capabilities to cope with the dynamics and uncertainties of the evolving states of real-world environments. However, conventional software architectures such as sense-model-plan-act and behaviour-based paradigms are inadequate for meeting the requirements. A lack of sensing during acting in the sense-model-plan-act paradigm makes the software slow to react to run-time contingencies, whereas the behaviour-based architectures typically fall short in planning of long-range steps and making optimized plan adaptations. This article proposes a hybrid software architecture that maintains both adaptivity and reactivity of robot behaviours in dynamic environments. To implement this architecture, we further present the multi-agent development framework known as AutoRobot, which views the robot software as a multi-agent system in which diverse agent roles collaborate to achieve software functionalities. To demonstrate the applicability and validity of our concrete framework and software architecture, we conduct an experiment to implement a typical case, for example, a robot that autonomously picks up and drops off dishes for remote guests, which requires the robot to plan and navigate in a highly dynamic environment and can adapt its behaviours to unexpected situations.