Mobile robot control with concurrent logic languages

Experiences from a project in which a small mobile robot is controlled by a concurrent logic language are described. The purpose of the project is to study what is required from the logic language, and to see what are the advantages of using such a language instead of more classical programming languages. It is found that real-time concepts like timers, sensors, actuators, feedback, exception handling, dynamic map construction and fully parallel communication between units can be easily accommodated in a simple framework based on a concurrent logic language. The simplicity with which this can be done is due to two factors: first, the symbolic processing ability, which enables clean handling of communication; second, the natural integration of parallel processing and synchronization into the language