How did Rodney Brooks design robots that connected sensor inputs directly to motor actions?

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Humanoid robot — robot ASIMO, a two-legged humanoid robot developed by the Honda Motor Co.

Rodney Brooks revolutionized robotics by rejecting the traditional top-down approach to artificial intelligence, which required robots to maintain complex internal representations of their environment before acting.1

Instead, Brooks championed a bottom-up approach that prioritized immediate action and behavior. By designing robots to function like insects, he created systems that connected sensor inputs directly to motor actions. This method operated on the premise that sophisticated behavior emerges naturally from simple interactions with the real world, rather than from pre-programmed internal models. Through this philosophy, his robots were able to perform complex tasks by building upon basic, reactive behaviors.1