Cooperative Behaviors - Discrete Event Systems based approach

In this paper we present modeling, analysis and synthesis of visual behaviors of agents engaged in navigational tasks. We consider situations in which two agents can navigate independently or in cooperation. For the purpose of modeling the behaviors we have adopted a formalism from the Discrete Events Systems (DES) theory, suitable for investigating controltheoretic issues of a system. Our contribution is in: the development of the visual process that enables visual navigation and obstacle avoidance, and the identification of some elementary behaviors needed for navigation and communication and their composition leading to more complex behaviors. We distinguish two kinds of elementary behaviors, one where observations are directly connected with physical actions, and another where observations and actions are either received or transmitted. The use of the DES formalism allows us to synthesize complex behaviors in a systematic fashion and guarantee their controllability.