What is it?
This is a kind of decision cycle that it applied continuously in an ever-changing environment. It was developed by John Boyd, a US Air Force fighter pilot/instructor who was highly influential in aerial combat theory.
Briefly, it is a real-time decision loop in which one cycles through 4 stages:
- Observation: collect what's happening right now
- Orientation: analyze and synthesize data with respect to a status
- Ddecision: form a course of action based on status
- Action: execute on the course of action
While simple in appearance, a trained practioner applies tremendous amounts of skilled data processing, analysis, and tactical execution in each stage. As a structure, I think it is useful for self-training and conceptual model development; interestingly, John Boyd himself had no combat kill experience and yet developed the world standard model for fighter aircraft design energy-manueverability theory.
Related Interests
In computer algorithms, video games use decision loops to implement OODA logic using @@state machines@@ and @@behavior trees@@ as forms of "Game AI". @@Guidance systems@@ for thrust-based objects use a similar control loop approach because there is no computable analytic solution (@@needref@@).