Unified Behavior Framework in an Embedded Robot Controller

<p>Recent technological advances produce small inexpensive embedded hardware platforms that are powerful enough to match robots from just a few years ago. The Unified Behavior Framework is a flexible responsive control architecture that has not been applied on embedded systems in robots. This thesis presents a development of the Unified Behavior Framework on the Mini-WHEGSTM a biologically inspired embedded robotic platform which is a small robot that utilize wheel-legs to emulate cockroach walking patterns. Wheel-legs combine wheels and legs for high mobility without the complex control system required for legs. Also included is a color camera and a rotary encoder enabling the Mini-WHEGSTM to identify color objects and track its position. A hardware abstraction layer designed for the robot in this configuration decouples the control system from the hardware and and provide the interface between the software and the hardware. The result is a highly mobile embedded robot system capable of exchanging behavior modules with much larger robots while requiring little or no change to the modules.</p><p>This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore you will see the original copyright references library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world) and other notations in the work.</p><p>This work is in the public domain in the United States of America and possibly other nations. Within the United States you may freely copy and distribute this work as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.</p><p>As a reproduction of a historical artifact this work may contain missing or blurred pages poor pictures errant marks etc. Scholars believe and we concur that this work is important enough to be preserved reproduced and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.</p>