Behavior Trees and State Machines in Robotics Applications

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Ghzouli, Razan, Berger, Thorsten, Johnsen, Einar Broch, Wasowski, Andrzej, Dragule, Swaib
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2022
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author Ghzouli, Razan
Berger, Thorsten
Johnsen, Einar Broch
Wasowski, Andrzej
Dragule, Swaib
author_facet Ghzouli, Razan
Berger, Thorsten
Johnsen, Einar Broch
Wasowski, Andrzej
Dragule, Swaib
contents Autonomous robots combine skills to form increasingly complex behaviors, called missions. While skills are often programmed at a relatively low abstraction level, their coordination is architecturally separated and often expressed in higher-level languages or frameworks. State machines have been the go-to language to model behavior for decades, but recently, behavior trees have gained attention among roboticists. Although several implementations of behavior trees are in use, little is known about their usage and scope in the real world.How do concepts offered by behavior trees relate to traditional languages, such as state machines? How are concepts in behavior trees and state machines used in actual applications? This paper is a study of the key language concepts in behavior trees as realized in domain-specific languages (DSLs), internal and external DSLs offered as libraries, and their use in open-source robotic applications supported by the Robot Operating System (ROS). We analyze behavior-tree DSLs and compare them to the standard language for behavior models in robotics:state machines. We identify DSLs for both behavior-modeling languages, and we analyze five in-depth.We mine open-source repositories for robotic applications that use the analyzed DSLs and analyze their usage. We identify similarities between behavior trees and state machines in terms of language design and the concepts offered to accommodate the needs of the robotics domain. We observed that the usage of behavior-tree DSLs in open-source projects is increasing rapidly. We observed similar usage patterns at model structure and at code reuse in the behavior-tree and state-machine models within the mined open-source projects. We contribute all extracted models as a dataset, hoping to inspire the community to use and further develop behavior trees, associated tools, and analysis techniques.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2208_04211
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Behavior Trees and State Machines in Robotics Applications
Ghzouli, Razan
Berger, Thorsten
Johnsen, Einar Broch
Wasowski, Andrzej
Dragule, Swaib
Robotics
Software Engineering
D.0; D.2.13; D.2.2
Autonomous robots combine skills to form increasingly complex behaviors, called missions. While skills are often programmed at a relatively low abstraction level, their coordination is architecturally separated and often expressed in higher-level languages or frameworks. State machines have been the go-to language to model behavior for decades, but recently, behavior trees have gained attention among roboticists. Although several implementations of behavior trees are in use, little is known about their usage and scope in the real world.How do concepts offered by behavior trees relate to traditional languages, such as state machines? How are concepts in behavior trees and state machines used in actual applications? This paper is a study of the key language concepts in behavior trees as realized in domain-specific languages (DSLs), internal and external DSLs offered as libraries, and their use in open-source robotic applications supported by the Robot Operating System (ROS). We analyze behavior-tree DSLs and compare them to the standard language for behavior models in robotics:state machines. We identify DSLs for both behavior-modeling languages, and we analyze five in-depth.We mine open-source repositories for robotic applications that use the analyzed DSLs and analyze their usage. We identify similarities between behavior trees and state machines in terms of language design and the concepts offered to accommodate the needs of the robotics domain. We observed that the usage of behavior-tree DSLs in open-source projects is increasing rapidly. We observed similar usage patterns at model structure and at code reuse in the behavior-tree and state-machine models within the mined open-source projects. We contribute all extracted models as a dataset, hoping to inspire the community to use and further develop behavior trees, associated tools, and analysis techniques.
title Behavior Trees and State Machines in Robotics Applications
topic Robotics
Software Engineering
D.0; D.2.13; D.2.2
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.04211