A hardware retargetable distributed layered architecture for mobile robot control

The MIT mobile robot project has adopted a layered approach to building robust control systems for autonomous mobile robots. We build a complete control system for a very simple task achieving behavior for our robots, then lay additional complete control systems on top of it to achieve higher level tasks. We have this architecture operational on three completely different types of hardware (a general purpose computer, a special purpose multi-processor, and processor-less logic network) and are now working on a fourth, by way of a special purpose silicon compiler for it. Exactly the same high level language specification files are used on three of these four architectures. The control architect is thus freed from even the most global considerations of the target architecture.