Subsumption Architecture - Introduction

The brain of a robot is the software. The software has to take in the sensor data, interpret it, and generate commands to the actuators. One architecture for robot software is called subsumption. It came out of MIT and Prof. Rodney Brooks who is a founder of iRobot who makes my Create robot. The idea is to break the robotos activities into small pieces. Let me build up the concept by example. A fundamental activity of a robot is to cruise around. If nothing is to be done just let the robot drive straight ahead. So we create an activity called Cruise. It simply actuates the motors to go straight at a safe speed. It is easy to write and test. After driving straight ahead for awhile the robot bumps into something. And continues to try to go straight ahead. This is not good for the robot or the cat or furniture it bumped into. So we write a Bump activity using the sensors on the robot - the Create has a right and a left bump sensor on the front that wrap around a bit toward the sides. So Bump determines if a bump sensor was triggered the robot should stop. So we write Bump. How to Bump and Drive get put together in the software? This is the subsumption architecture part. Initially its easy. First call Bump. If it doesn't activate, call Drive. If Bump does activate, don't call Drive. Let this run. The robot goes merrily off, bumps into a cat, and stops. The cat gets up, the robot continues straight ahead, hits a chair, stops, and stops and stops and stops. Not very interesting. What we'd like is for the robot to back up a little bit, turn, and then continue straight ahead. Hopefully that will clear the obstacle, and it will if the robot just brushed a wall. But even if it doesn't, repeating that behavior will eventually turn the robot toward an open area. (Well, many times it will. More later...) This new behavior is somewhat different from Bump and Drive because we want it to do the back and turn without interruption. The term used for this is a ballistic behavior. Do we add this to Bump or Drive, or create a new behavior? The texts I've read added it to Bump. But based on my experience I create a new behavior called Flee. Flee works with what could be called an internal sensor. This internal sensor tells Flee thow much to back up and turn. So Bump sets this internal sensor to backup a little bit (40 mm) and turn a little (20 degrees). Since Bump can tell whether the left or right bump sensor (or both) was hit it also sets the direction of the turn so the robot will turn away from the bump. Now the activities are called in the order: Flee, Bump, Drive. Remember that if Flee is active the later activites aren't called. If Bump is active, Drive is not called. So the robot Drives ahead, Bumps into something, the internal flee sensor is set, and Flee backs up and turns the robot. Then with both Flee and Bump inactive, Drive engages and the robot moves ahead. Just for completeness, I have another activity called Trapped. It is added between Flee and Bump. Every time Trapped is called it records the time and distance moved. If the robot has not moved very far (80 mm) in a certain period of time (10 seconds) then Trapped sets the flee sensor to back a little bit and turn 180 degrees. The idea is that by turning 180 degrees the robot can get out of a bad situation. One such situation is the legs on a rolling desk chair, or a corner. With these behaviors my Create wanders around the house pretty well. The actual implementation needs a couple more details. Here is some psuedo code: preempt = false; preempt = Flee(preempt); preempt = Trapped(preempt); preempt = Bump(preempt); preempt = Drive(preempt); The variable preempt is set to true by an activity if it is active. If Bump sense a bump then it sets preempt. When Drive sees preempt is set it does not activate, i.e. does not drive forward. If Bump sees preempt is set it does not bother checking the bump sensors, because presumably Flee is now handling the bump condition. Why bother calling activities if they are preempted? Look back at how Trapped works. It is monitoring the distance traveled. If it is not called because Flee is active... And there I'm going to let it hang because I don't remember why. But I'm going to publish this now, leave it as is, and resume in another posting. This is software development as it is, folks. There are a few possibilities here:

• I simply don't recall the reason so have to remember it or rethink it. That is why you should document things.
• There was a valid reason that is no longer valid. Boy, that happens all the time in development. A good habit to develop is to revist assumpts regularly to see how they've changed.
• I simply blew it when writing the code many months ago.
• ...or some totally different situation that I can't think of right now.

That is the basics of subsumption, though. A good book on robot programming that covers subsumption is Robot Programming - A Practical Guide to Behavior-Based Robotics" by Joseph L. Jones.

...sine die