How to make robots predictable with a priority based architecture and a new legal model - The Robot Report

The article discusses the challenge of ensuring predictable and safe behavior in increasingly autonomous robots, such as Tesla's Optimus humanoid and Waymo's driverless cars. Traditional robotic control systems rely on predefined scripts or reactive responses to commands, which can lead to conflicting actions and hesitation in complex, dynamic environments. Such unpredictability poses significant safety risks, especially when robots receive simultaneous or contradictory commands or when technical faults occur. To address these issues, the author’s team developed a priority-based control architecture that moves beyond simple stimulus-response behavior. This system evaluates every event through mission and subject filters, considering environmental context and potential consequences before execution. The architecture features two interlinked hierarchies: a mission hierarchy that ranks goals from fundamental safety rules (e.g., “Do not harm a human”) to user-set and current tasks, and a hierarchy of interaction subjects that prioritizes commands based on their source, giving highest priority to owners or operators and lower priority to external parties. This approach aims to enable robots to act