MENU Home Introduction Construction Behaviour Sound Sampling MIDI handling Limitations Sound Toolkit	Behaviour In order for the robot to navigate any room and find people successfully, a series of behaviours had to be implemented. These allow the robot to observe the environment with sensors and make decisions based on its current situation. Since the specification for our robot called for operation in any standard environment as opposed to a specific arena, the behaviours would have to be designed to be general and resilient. The operation of the robot can be categorized as moving around, avoiding obstacles and making its way to loud sources of sound. Once it has reached what it thinks might be a person, it asks a question and waits for a response. It then tries to interpret the speech and act accordingly. In terms of priorities, then, the behaviours can be described as: Move around the world. Pick a direction and drive forwards. Do not bump into any objects. Avoid getting stuck. Look for people. Listen to sounds around the robot. Sense any objects close by that are making a sound. Move towards loud sounds. Listen for commands. Interpret any speech (yes/no). Dance. In order for these behaviours to work together and remain resilient enough for the robot to operate effectively, they were designed to be modular and independent of each other. This means that any set of behaviours can occur without any of the others present, and with less interference. As a result, the robot will not drive into a chair if it hears a person behind it. Making the behaviours smaller made them a lot easier to test individually, and so more certain to work together in the final model. The full working behaviour is best described in the behaviour flow diagram that follows (click on the picture for a bigger version):
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