Sensor data fusion on a parallel processor

A major obstacle to the implementation of an intelligent, multi-sensor integrated robotic system is the lack of a uniform environment for developing the diverse system components and for efficiently communicating between these components. Our work is concerned with the solution through mapping such system onto a single parallel processor. We present a graphical programming environment, the Function Network Programming Environment, for developing and hierarchically organizing the computational modules of complex, asynchronous systems. In this environment, dependencies between modules are described graphically by interconnected function nodes; hence, parallelism is expressed naturally. Implementation on the BBN Butterfly parallel processor is also discussed, and a hypothetical development cycle for a multi-sensor integrated robot is described. It is expected that this environment will greatly facilitate the design and development of sophisticated, multi-sensor integrated robotic systems as well as enhance human comprehension of such systems.