Control System Framework for Autonomous Robots Based on Extended State Machines

We present a new framework optimized for the design, implementation, and testing of control systems for autonomous robots. It is based on a new visual specification language which specifies both control and data flow, and which is suited to be interpreted in real-time. The framework is divided into a comprehensive development and a lightweight run-time environment. The latter is fully integrated with a real-time operating system and permits to reconfigure a control system without compilation at run time. Moreover, communication in distributed systems is supported. An earlier version of the framework has been successfully applied in an autonomous helicopter and an autonomous ground vehicle project