Property Mapping: A Simple Technique for Mobile Robot Programming

Abstract

The mobile robot programming problem is a software engineering challenge that is not easily conquered using contemporary software engineering best practices. We propose robot observability as a measure of the diagnostic transparency of a situated robot program, then describe property mapping as a simple, language-independent approach to implementing reliable robot programs by maximizing robot observability. Examples from realworld, working robots are given in Lisp and Java. Introduction The recent availability of inexpensive, reliable robot chassis (e.g. ActivMedia Pioneer, IS-Robotics Magellan, Nomad Scout) has broadened the accessibility of mobile robotics research. Because these robots consist of fixed hardware out-of-the-box, this technology is shifting the emphasis of mobile robot research from a joint hardware and software design process toward hardware-unaware mobile robot programming. This is a software design problem, and yet software engineering best practices are ...