A case study in applying discrete control synthesis to excavator operation

Robotic and control systems are ever more complex to design, program, as well as to operate. Existing theoretical work and tool support in discrete control synthesis can be applied to improve task-level robot programming. This requires to determine patterns of tasks and objectives, which are at once domain-specific to robotics, and generic enough to cover a broad class of control systems. We illustrate such a framework by a case study concerning the interactive discrete control of tasks in an excavating system.