General Robotic System Software Design Methodology

Abstract

Robotic systems are composed of at least one robot and zero or more auxiliary devices. They contain effectors, receptors and the control system. Currently control systems are computer based thus the software component is of paramount importance. Software engineering good practices require that first the designed software should be specified and then implemented. The paper focuses on the specification phase of robotic system software creation. The presented method decomposes a robotic system into embodied agents. Each embodied agent is composed of its control subsystem and zero or more real as well as virtual effectors and receptors. The description of activities of each of those subsystems uses the concepts of hierarchic finite state machines, behaviours, transition functions and supplementary predicates, i.e. terminal and error conditions as well as predicates defining inter subsystem communication mode. The ontological level of the specification, conforming to the executed class of tasks, is defined by the contents of the inter-subsystem communication buffers as well as their internal memory.