Development of a blackboard system for robot programming

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a blackboard system for robot programming. The blackboard architecture is a system architecture which provides a structured way of coordinating different sub-systems in such a way that they can work together to solve problems. A blackboard system was implemented in Prolog and it has been applied successfully for the automatic generation of control code for a robot to perform the task of block assembly in an environment with an obstacle. In this blackboard system, the user-interface to the system is treated as an additional knowledge source of the system. Through this knowledge source, the user can find out the status of the operation. He can also modify the goal specifications and the robot will plan according to the new specification.