RCS: A Cognitive Architecture for Intelligent Multi-Agent Systems

Published

July 7, 2004

Author(s)

James S. Albus, Tony Barbera

Abstract

RCS (Real-time Control System) is a cognitive architecture designed to enable any level of intelligent behavior, up to and including human levels of performance. RCS was inspired 30 years ago by a theoretical model of the cerebellum, the portion of the brain responsible for fine motor coordination and control of conscious motions. It was originally designed for sensory-interactive goal-directed control of laboratory manipulators. Over three decades, it has evolved into a real-time control architecture for intelligent machine tools, factory automation systems, and intelligent autonomous vehicles. RCS consists of a multi-layered multi-resolutional hierarchy of computational agents each containing elements of sensory processing (SP), world modeling (WM), value judgment (VJ), behavior generation (BG), and a knowledge database (KD). At the lower levels, these agents generate goal-seeking reactive behavior. At higher levels, they enable decision making, planning, and deliberative behavior.

Conference Dates

July 5-7, 2004

Conference Location

Lisbon, 1, PO

Conference Title

5th IFAC/EURON Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles, IAV 2004

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

cognitive architectures, image processing., intelligent machines, knowledge representation, knowledge-based control, recursive estimation, systems engineering, unmanned vehicles

Citation

Albus, J. and Barbera, T. (2004), RCS: A Cognitive Architecture for Intelligent Multi-Agent Systems, 5th IFAC/EURON Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles, IAV 2004, Lisbon, 1, PO, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=822517 (Accessed October 27, 2025)