A task-level robot programming language and its reactive execution

A robotic application is defined by a set of scheduled actions, each action being modeled as a robot-task with functional and behavioral aspects. The authors propose a programming approach located at an intermediary level between objective and object levels, called the task-level. The basic feature consists of using a synchronous language (Esterel) as the target language of an application programming language that is able to express in a natural way the logical and temporal dependencies of the actions. The synchrony assumption induces the need for the design of a synchronous/asynchronous interface to be associated with the computer system. This aspect is considered. The proposed language is presented, and an example of a robotic application is given