Using English as a High-Level Robot Command Language

Abstract

To facilitate expedient communication with robots, a very high-level hierarchical robot command language (Hirob) has been designed and implemented. Hirob uses the full and comprehensive syntax of the English imperative, allowing users to control a robot without the need of learning an esoteric programming language. A Parser/Scanner/Recognizer (PSR) performs a lexical analysis of a Hirob command stream, and identifies which portions of the command stream already exist as fully defined procedures in the files of the Procedure Management System (PMS). Those portions which do not exist must be defined using either existing Hirob procedures (English phrases), or by using the primitive commands of the low-level robot command language (Lorob). This process is fully recursive, so that Hirob procedures may consist of defined or undefined Hirob procedures, as well as Lorob commands, with the understanding that a high-level command cannot be executed until all of its hierarchical subcommands have been fully defined. A user-friendly editor has been incorporated into the PMS to allow convenient creation, modification, and testing of Hirob commands.