A modular computing architecture for autonomous robots

This paper presents a modular computing architecture used for intelligent control of autonomous robots. The architecture takes the form of multiple sensing and control layers, based on Locally Intelligent Control Agents (LICAs) in which IBM PowerPC, SIEMENS 80C166, and INMOS Transputers are adopted. The control tasks are distributed among a set of the LICA-based behaviour experts that tightly couple sensing and action, but which are also loosely coupled to each other. It provides a high bandwidth computing platform for real-time navigation and control tasks embedded in real-world applications. Based on this modular design, autonomous mobile robots have been built successfully to implement both indoor and outdoor navigation. © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.