High-level Programming of Low-level Behaviours for Autonomous Robots

Introduction Programming autonomous robots requires a language that is able to express both very high-level algorithms as well as low-level control. We are developing a concurrent programming framework, which is able to handle both complex, high-level algorithms and very low-level hardware control in the same language. In order to illustrate these features we shall describe briefly the approach to implementing one high-level algorithm, which is constraint solving. As an example of low-level programming, we shall outline how behaviours can be programmed using the same programming concepts. We assume familiarity with symbolic languages such as Lisp, Prolog, the Behavior Language, and some acquaintance with constraint solving. 2 The basic programming framework The basic programming language we use, Real-Time Fleng, is a concurrent programming language derived from symbolic languages such as Lisp, Prolog, and Guarded Horn Clauses. It has an inher