Robot Control Program Designer

Control program is the soul of a robot, it governs the automonous behaviour of the robot and guides it to the goal. Inspired by the NXT program for mindstorms robot, our first project's goal is to create a mobile application based on Android and iOS platform for allowing users to easily develop their own Robot Control System, interfacing with the robot through wireless connection, and in real time receiving primitive sensors reading and giving instruction to the robot actuators, in this way your smart phone becomes the brain of the robot.

Two primary steps for the user to construct a Robot Control Program are

1. Symbol Creation

Users define symbols to be used in the control program, two main types of the symbols are Perception and Action For example, a perception symbol tooclose can be defined as ultrasonic sensor reading less than 10cm, similarly, an action symbol turnright can be defined as sending positive signal to the left motor, it is really up to the users how to design the symbols.

2. Control Program Design

After all the symbols are defined, users can use drag and drop UI to design their own control program right away, the program being constructed is a tree-like program which is also known as the Teleo-reactive program. Teleo-reactive program allows robot to be highly reactive and adaptive to the dynamic enovirnments.

When running the control program, the app will continuously parse the program tree from the root node, and send instruction to the robot. In this example, the robot will move forward until it almost hit the wall, then it will turn right until the way is clear, then it will move forward again. The mobile app will also allow users to interact with the automous robot.