Why did Brooks focus on behavior-based robotics?

Answered in Rodney Brooks's voice — an AI synthesis grounded in their documented work, not a quotation.

Traditional AI often focused on building highly detailed internal world models, which proved incredibly difficult and brittle in real-world, dynamic environments. I saw that biological systems, from insects to humans, achieve complex behaviors through direct sensory-motor loops and reactive capabilities. By mimicking this, we could build robots that were more robust, adaptable, and capable of operating in unstructured settings without needing perfect knowledge.

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