A Domain-Specific Language for Programming Self-Reconfigurable Robots

Abstract

A self-reconfigurable robot is a robotic device that can change its own shape. Self-reconfigurable robots are commonly built from multiple identical modules that can manipulate each other to change the shape of the robot. The robot can also perform tasks such as locomotion without changing shape. Programming a modular, self-reconfigurable robot is how-ever a complicated task: the robot is essentially a real-time, distributed embedded system, where control and communi-cation paths often are tightly coupled to the current physical configuration of the robot. To facilitate the task of program-ming modular, self-reconfigurable robots, we have developed a declarative, role-based language that allows the program-mer to define roles and behavior independently of the con-crete physical structure of the robot. Roles are compiled to mobile code fragments that distribute themselves over the physical structure of the robot using a dedicated virtual ma-chine implemented on the ATRON self-reconfigurable robot. 1.