On the Implementation of Behavior Trees in Robotics

TL;DR

This paper discusses practical implementation aspects of Behavior Trees in robotics, highlighting community solutions, software integration, and a real-world use case to facilitate their adoption in robotic systems.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of how Behavior Trees are implemented in robotics, including software libraries, architectural integration, and practical considerations.

Findings

Analysis of open-source BT libraries for robotics

Guidelines for integrating BTs into robotic architectures

A real-world example demonstrating BT application in robotics

Abstract

There is a growing interest in Behavior Trees (BTs) as a tool to describe and implement robot behaviors. BTs were devised in the video game industry and their adoption in robotics resulted in the development of ad-hoc libraries to design and execute BTs that fit complex robotics software architectures. While there is broad consensus on how BTs work, some characteristics rely on the implementation choices done in the specific software library used. In this letter, we outline practical aspects in the adoption of BTs and the solutions devised by the robotics community to fully exploit the advantages of BTs in real robots. We also overview the solutions proposed in open-source libraries used in robotics, we show how BTs fit in robotic software architecture, and we present a use case example.