Paradigms of A.I. Robotics

The Potential Field Architecture
Treat the robot as a point particle in a force field, motions of the robot
are thereby represented by paths of a particle through this field with
obstacles and goals acting appropriately on the particle via attractive
or repulsive forces.
For each behaviour the robot "feels" a force. Obstacles act as
repulsive forces and goals as attractive forces.
Complex behaviours result from applying the sum of all forces to
the robot.
The overall behaviour of a robot in an environment can be
represented by a potential field, where the vector associated to
each point represents the force the robot would feel at that point.
Paradigms of A.I. Robotics – p.26/