Abstract
Controllers for autonomous robotic systems can be specified using state machines . However, these are typically developed in an ad hoc manner without formal semantics, which makes it difficult to analyse the controller. Simulations are often used during the development, but a rigorous connection between the designed controller and the implementation is often overlooked. This paper presents a state-machine based notation, RoboChart, together with a tool to automatically create code from the state machines, establishing a rigorous connection between specification and implementation. In RoboChart, a robot’s controller is specified either graphically or using a textual description language. The controller code for simulation is automatically generated through a direct mapping from the specification. We demonstrate our approach using two case studies (self-organized aggregation and swarm taxis) in swarm robotics. The simulations are presented using two different simulators showing the general applicability of our approach.
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Notes
- 1.
The specification of environment is still under development. Currently the environmental stimuli are manually defined in the simulation.
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The authors would like to acknowledge the support from EPSRC grant EP/M025756/1.
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Li, W., Miyazawa, A., Ribeiro, P., Cavalcanti, A., Woodcock, J., Timmis, J. (2018). From Formalised State Machines to Implementations of Robotic Controllers. In: Groß, R., et al. Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems. Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73008-0_36
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73008-0_36
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