Why a behavior layer
Every manufacturer ships its own closed stack. Put six vendors on one site and you get six dashboards, six schedules and no shared awareness. A behavior layer sits above all of them and supplies the behavior: what each machine does, when, and how it reacts to the others. The fleet stops being a dozen closed systems and starts behaving as one.
How it works: perceive, think, decide, act
- Perceive. Sensor and telemetry streams from any vendor are normalized into one model of the site: floors, zones, obstacles, people and other machines.
- Think. Tasks are assigned against live conditions rather than a fixed timetable. A spill, a closed corridor or a late delivery re-plans the fleet, not just one unit.
- Decide. Decisions are bounded by written policy the machines cannot break: speed in public areas, exclusion zones, certified-area limits and handover to a human. Every decision is logged and auditable.
- Act. Execution runs across the whole fleet, vendors and machine classes alike. A scrubber, a patrol robot and a terminal tractor share the same map, the same rules and the same operator.
How machines connect
| VDA 5050 Open standard | The interface most of intralogistics already speaks. Published by the VDA with VDMA, it defines how a master control sends transport orders to vehicles and how vehicles report state back, over MQTT with JSON payloads. Version 3.0 (March 2026) adds support for freely navigating robots and a formal zone concept. Brings in AGVs, AMRs, tuggers and autonomous forklifts without a per-brand integration. |
|---|---|
| Open-RMF Open standard | Coordinates robots from different vendors with each other and with lifts, doors and other building bottlenecks. Managed by the Open Source Robotics Alliance. Brings in service, cleaning and security fleets. |
| ROS 2 Middleware | The framework many modern autonomous machines are built on. Where a manufacturer exposes its ROS 2 graph, the machine can join the behavior layer directly. Covers inspection quadrupeds, research platforms and most newer industrial autonomy. |
| Vendor API Direct | Where a manufacturer publishes its own REST or SDK interface, HORMĒ writes and maintains a connector against it and ships it to every customer. Covers most port and heavy equipment. |
Machine classes
The behavior layer drives twelve machine classes: robots, vehicles, heavy equipment, drones, marine systems, aircraft, industrial systems, oil and gas equipment, agriculture, logistics, smart systems and space systems. Each class has its own manufacturers, certification path and physics; the behavior layer is common to all of them, the adapters are not.
Where it is used
- Cleaning robots and solar panel cleaning
- Delivery and service robots in hotels, malls and hospitals
- Security and patrol robots
- Inspection robots for oil, gas and industry, including Zone 1 areas
- Warehouse robots and autonomous forklifts
- Port and heavy equipment and marine safety systems
Pricing
Licensed per machine, per month: Core $149, Autonomy $349, Assured $690 (indicative; fleet rates above twenty machines). See pricing.
Questions
What is Behavioral Intelligence?
Behavioral Intelligence is a software layer that decides what autonomous machines do, when, and how they react to each other, across every vendor and machine class on a site. HORMĒ's platform supplies that layer: it does not build the machines, it gives them autonomous behavior.
How is it different from a robot vendor's fleet manager?
A vendor fleet manager runs one brand. Put six vendors on one site and you get six dashboards, six schedules and no shared awareness. A behavior layer sits above all of them, so every machine shares the same map, rules and operator.
Do machines need to be replaced to use it?
No. Machines connect through open standards (VDA 5050, Open-RMF, ROS 2) or through a connector written against the manufacturer's own API. Where a vendor's stack is closed, HORMĒ says so before you buy.
Is every decision auditable?
Yes. Decisions are bounded by written policy and every decision is logged. The Assured tier adds a full decision audit trail and export for regulated and certified areas.