A purposive computer vision system: a multi-agent approach

This paper describes a purposive computer vision system for visually guided tasks and a multi-agent architecture used to model it. In this architecture, the vision system's purpose is decomposed into a set of behaviors, which are translated into specific tasks. Purpose, behaviors and tasks, as well as the relationship among them, are modeled using a multi-agent approach. Purpose is modeled by a society of autonomous agents, which communicate through a common language, each one responsible for a specific visually guided behavior, tasks are represented by basic agents, organized in a hierarchical structure. A description of a system that is being implemented as a testbed for the architecture is given, with some details on the implementation of the agents and its communication methods. Finally, a brief discussion about the use of the basic agents is done and research directions are proposed.