The Generic Behavior Architecture project that is just beginning at MSEL and UNH focuses on developing a unifying architecture for autonomous vehicle control software that combines the best ingredients from symbolic AI, behavior-based control, and hierarchical architectures. Over the next three years or so, we will investigate the necessary generic behaviors for AUVs, implement them, a GB vocabulary, and the GB architecture, and evaluate our approach via experiments both in simulation and in the water at our new facility at Northeastern's Nahant (Massachusetts) campus.
In all phases of our project, we intend to involve the larger AUV community, both by disseminating our results and status electronically and via written reports and by soliciting input and participation during evaluations of the approach. The end result will be a generic architecture for intelligent control of autonomous vehicles that will be freely available to the AUV community.