Operational semantics in a domain-specific robot control language: A pedagogical use case

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on some aspects of structural operational semantics for a selected domain-specific language for robot control. After defining a syntax for two independent languages for control of a robot?s movements, we define a structural operational semantics for them. The integrated part of structural operational semantics is abstract implementation, which consists of defining abstract machine and transformation of a programming language to abstract machine instructions. The achieved results as well as the mentioned research are a part of the research in the field of semantic methods, where we focus on the formalization of semantic methods for software engineering. This area is also very important for the training of students and young IT experts because the semantic methods can help to understand program behavior and detect errors in program design. To make the teaching of formal semantics in the field of domain-specific languages more attractive, we have also prepared an application that serves to visualize the individual steps of the program on an abstract machine - simulation of translated code with visualization of a robot?s movement.