Behavior analysis and training-a methodology for behavior engineering

We propose Behavior Engineering as a new technological area whose aim is to provide methodologies and tools for developing autonomous robots. Building robots is a very complex engineering enterprise that requires the exact definition and scheduling of the activities which a designer, or a team of designers, should follow. Behavior Engineering is, within the autonomous robotics realm, the equivalent of more established disciplines like Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering. In this article we first give a detailed presentation of a Behavior Engineering methodology, which we call Behavior Analysis and Training (BAT), where we stress the role of learning and training. Then we illustrate the application of the BAT methodology to three cases involving different robots: two mobile robots and a manipulator. Results show the feasibility of the proposed approach.