A Robot Can Work Without First "Understanding the World"
Before Brooks proposed the subsumption architecture, mainstream robotics research widely assumed a robot must first build a complete, precise internal symbolic model of the external environment to plan a reasonable course of action, a path of huge computation and easily failing at a small change in the environment. The behavior-based path Brooks advocated proved that merely by designing a series of simple reactive behavior layers, letting the robot react immediately to environmental stimuli like an insect, one could likewise display complex, highly adaptive overall behavior, an idea that thereafter profoundly influenced the design of a great body of practical robot products including the iRobot Roomba.