Dynamic modularization and synchronization for intelligent robot coordination: the concept of functional time-dependency

The intelligent coordination of multiple robots requires modularization of robots at some level higher than the joint, corresponding task representations, and a concept of time that allows the dynamic specification of task synchronization. The necessary representations of robots and tasks are developed, and the structural and operational semantics of the primitive task and reflex models are specified. A concept of time, called functional time-dependency, that allows the dynamic specification of the distributed semantics during task execution by multiple robots is developed. The utility of functional time-dependency is shown using two examples