Infrastructure for real-time robotic control: aspects of robot command language

Abstract

The general mobile robotics infrastructure is examined by analogy to the structure of a C/sup 3/ system, and is found to consist of a systems architecture, the system processes and a system management infrastructure. The article then discusses the NASREM architecture, a USA standard for telerobots, and then describes RCL (Robot Command Language), which is based on the management infrastructure thereof. It provides universal communication among processes; that is, it provides unambiguous inter-layer command flow and supports both inter- and intra-layer information flow. Its elements include the definition of the syntax and semantics for a common skeleton into which system-specific vocabulary can be placed, and a minimum set of generic commands. Its semantics must be task-oriented, describing robot motions and capabilities only implicitly at higher levels of command, thus requiring compliance monitoring of system activities and allowing reasoning about the causality of command and side effects of command execution. Its syntax is hierarchical. >