Code reusability tools for programming mobile robots

This paper describes two initiatives aiming at improving code reusability for programming mobile robots: robotflow/flowdesigner, a data-flow programming environment; MARIE (mobile and autonomous robotics integration environment), a programming environment allowing multiple applications, programs and tools, to operate on one or multiple machines/OS and work together on a mobile robot implementation. Robotflow/flowdesigner´s objective is to provide a modular, graphical programming environment that would help visualize and understand what is really happening in the robot´s control loops, sensors, actuators, by using graphical probes. MARIE aims at avoiding making an exclusive choice on particular programming tools, making it possible to reuse code and applications.