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From: ccb8m@viper.cs.Virginia.EDU (Charles C. Bundy)
Subject: Re: parallelism & robotics
Message-ID: <CpLnEA.8rn@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Sender: usenet@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU
Organization: University of Virginia Computer Science Department
References: <2q85e1INN8h8@iraun1.ira.uka.de> <mfogartyCpE75y.8E@netcom.com> <CpF0u5.C0J@armory.com>
Date: Tue, 10 May 1994 18:30:09 GMT
Lines: 36

In article <CpF0u5.C0J@armory.com> rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz) writes:
>In article <mfogartyCpE75y.8E@netcom.com>,
>Michael Fogarty <mfogarty@netcom.com> wrote:
>>Dominik Henrich -4265 (dhenrich@ira.uka.de) wrote:
>>
>>: Hi,
>>
>>: Please, can anyone point me out references, articles, etc. about
>>: parallel processing in robotics.
>>
>>: I will summarize the responses if appropriate.
>>
>>Have you looked at Brooks' (MIT) work?  His work on Ghengis and Attila
>>may not be "parallelism" in the way most people use the word, but it
>>certainly is...something. 
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------
>>mfogarty
>----------------
>Isn't that called "subsumption architecture" sort of tree-like with smaller

Yes, and sort of. :)  It doesn't have to be "smaller" but stuff further up
the line tends to override stuff towards the bottom.  You basically have all 
these behavioral systems hooked up in parallel between sensors and effectors.

                            ...
                 _| Attracted to Light sys|
       SENSORS -|  Avoid Collision system |- EFFECTORS

This stuff has been around for a while (reactive) but Brooks formalized it.
The beauty of this is that each system can operate/fail w/o crashing the
other systems, and the aggregate SENSOR/EFFECTOR interpretations are quite
complex (ala appear intelligent)

Charles C. Bundy IV
ccb8m@virginia.edu
