Towards Easy Robot Programming - Using DSLs, Code Generators and Software Product Lines

Abstract

Programming robots is a complicated and time-consuming task. A robot is essentially a real-time, distributed embedded system. Often, control and communication paths within the system are tightly coupled to the actual physical configuration of the robot. Thus, programming a robot can hardly be achieved by experts of the domain in which the robot is used. In this paper we present an approach towards a domain specific language, which is intended to empower domain experts or even end users to specify robot programs with a dedicated background in programming techniques, but not with special knowledge in the robotics domain. Furthermore we introduce an idea to integrate a software product-line for a hardware and software transparent plug and play mechanism.