Extended behavior trees for quick definition of flexible robotic tasks

Francesco Rovida, Bjarne Grossmann, Volker Kruger

Research output: Contribution to book/anthology/report/conference proceedingArticle in proceedingResearchpeer-review

71 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The requirement of flexibility in the modern industries demands robots that can be efficiently and quickly adapted to different tasks. A way to achieve such a flexible programming paradigm is to instruct robots with task goals and leave planning algorithms to deduct the correct sequence of actions to use in the specific context. A common approach is to connect the skills that realize a semantically defined operation in the planning domain - such as picking or placing an object - to specific executable functions. As a result the skills are treated as independent components, which results into suboptimal execution. In this paper we present an approach where the execution procedures and the planning domain are specified at the same time using solely extended Behavior Trees (eBT), a model formalized and discussed in this paper. At run-time, the robot can use the more abstract skills to plan a sequence using a PDDL planner, expand the sequence into a hierarchical tree, and re-organize it to optimize the time of execution and the use of resources. The optimization is demonstrated on a kitting operation in both simulation and lab environment, showing up to 20% save in the final execution time.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationIEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2017
Number of pages8
Volume2017-September
PublisherIEEE
Publication date13 Dec 2017
Pages6793-6800
Article number8206598
ISBN (Electronic)978-1-5386-2682-5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 13 Dec 2017
Event2017 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2017 - Vancouver, Canada
Duration: 24 Sept 201728 Sept 2017

Conference

Conference2017 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2017
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityVancouver
Period24/09/201728/09/2017
SponsorAIRA, Amazon, Bosch, Clearpath, et al., Guangdong University of Technology
SeriesI E E E International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Proceedings
ISSN2153-0858

Keywords

  • autonomous robots
  • behavior trees
  • hierarchical task networks
  • planning
  • skills

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Extended behavior trees for quick definition of flexible robotic tasks'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this