自主机器人的主动观察模式及软件实现架构

Active Observation Schemes and Software Implementation Architecture of Autonomous Robot

自主机器人运行在开放环境中,对环境信息的感知受限,难以获得有关环境完整、及时的信息。为有效完成任务,自主机器人需要主动地观察环境,即根据任务的需求,自发地决策、调度和执行观察行为,针对性地获取与任务相关的环境信息。主动观察的需求给自主机器人的观察模式以及软件系统构造提出了两方面的挑战:一方面,为支持任务的有效实现,需设计主动的观察模式,从机制层面确保自主机器人能够基于任务需求,观察所需的环境信息;另一方面,主动的观察模式导致自主机器人观察、决策等软构件的功能抽象和数据交互更为复杂,需要针对上层复杂机制的实现设计适配的软件架构。为应对上述挑战,文中将自主机器人的行为定义为任务行为和观察行为两类,针对开放环境中两类典型的环境信息受限场景——片面观察场景和过时观察场景,提出了两类主动观察模式来构建观察行为与任务行为的协同机制,并基于这两类主动观察模式设计了观察行为的决策和调度算法。另外,还设计了一个基于多智能体系统的自主机器人软件架构,实现了所提出的主动观察模式。最后,为验证所提出的主动观察模式的有效性,选取开放环境中一个典型的任务——图书馆服务机器人的图书传送任务开展实验验证。该任务中,自主机器人对图书的位置信息受限,容易导致图书传送任务失败。文中选取当前自主机器人领域主流的反应式观察和伴随观察模式作为对比方法,通过从行为执行过程、行动轨迹和时间消耗3方面进行对比,验证了所提方法的有效性。

ion and data interaction of the software components such as observation and decision-making of autonomous robots more complicated,so it is necessary to design a software architecture sui-table for the implementation of the complex mechanism on the upper level.In order to deal with the above challenges,this paper defines the behaviors of autonomous robots as task behaviors and observation behaviors.Two kinds of active observation schemes are proposed to construct a collaborative mechanism between observation behaviors and task behaviors,aiming at the two typical scenes with limited environmental information in the open environment:one-sided observation and outdated observation scenes,and the decision and scheduling algorithms of observation behavior are designed based on these two active observation schemes.In addition,an autonomous robot software architecture based on the multi-agent system is designed to implement the proposed active observation schemes.Finally,in order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed active observation schemes,a typical task in the open environment:the book transfer task of the library service robot is selected to carry out experimental verification.In this task,the location information of the book is limited by the autonomous robot,which easily leads to the failure of the book transfer task.In this paper,the reactive observation and the accompanying observation schemes of the current mainstream in the field of autonomous robots are selected as the comparison method,and the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by comparing the behavior execution process,motion trajectory and time consumption.