Multi-agent Architecture Model for Driving Mobile Manipulator Robots

In this article, we present generic hierarchical behavior-based architecture model for driving mobile manipulator robots. Two behaviors are of high-level. They constitute the Supervisory agent, which manages the global system. Two others are of intermediate-level and finally one behavior is of low-level. These last ones constitute the Mobile Robot agent and the Manipulator Robot agent controlling, respectively, the mobile base and the manipulator arm. The choice of the suggested model is justified by the generic character of the proposed agent model and by the possibility of integrating the whole in a distributed robotic system. The model is formalized in Agent UML from the conceptual level to the implementation level. The interaction between the various agents is modeled by the use of the interaction diagrams of Agent UML (states and protocol diagrams).