Title :
ALFA: a language for programming reactive robotic control systems
Author_Institution :
Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA, USA
Abstract :
The author introduces ALFA, a language for programming reactive control mechanisms for autonomous mobile robots. ALFA programs consist of networks of computational modules connected by communications channels. These channels are themselves computational entities which perform mediation tasks. This makes it possible to design modular behaviors which may be inserted and removed without having to restructure the interconnections among modules and allows the system to interface cleanly with higher-level reasoning processes. ALFA supports a dataflow computation model as well as a state-machine model. The results of two experiments using ALFA to control real robots are briefly discussed
Keywords :
high level languages; inference mechanisms; mobile robots; robot programming; ALFA; autonomous mobile robots; communications channels; computational modules network; dataflow computation model; reactive robotic control system programming language; reasoning; robot programming; state-machine model; Communication channels; Communication system control; Computer architecture; Computer networks; Control systems; Hardware; Mediation; Mobile robots; Robot control; Robot programming;
Conference_Titel :
Robotics and Automation, 1991. Proceedings., 1991 IEEE International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Sacramento, CA
Print_ISBN :
0-8186-2163-X
DOI :
10.1109/ROBOT.1991.131743
