Synchronous dataflow and visual programming for prototyping robotic algorithms

Abstract

Robots perceive their environment by processing continuous streams of data, which can be very naturally modelled as a dataflow graph. The development of new perception algorithms is often an iterative process, involving the investigation of a set of parameters and their influence on the system. The amount of immediate feedback available to the developer can make these influences more obvious and can therefore speed up development. We present a framework based on synchronous dataflow and event-based message passing that forms the basis of a visual programming language for rapid prototyping of robotic perception systems. We explicitly model algorithmic parameters in the dataflow graph, which results in a more expressive feature set. We provide an open-source implementation, consisting of a user interface for immediate feedback and interactive manipulation of dataflow algorithms and an independent execution framework that can be directly used on any robot.