R2AD: rapid robotics application development environment

R²AD, a flexible robotics application development environment, combines powerful graphical display features with tools that support the rapid development of application programs. The graphical interface allows researchers to monitor the system state variables during the dynamic execution of robot programs. This feature enhances the researcher´s efficiency in interpreting experimental results. Rapid development is supported by a virtual machine through the use of software engineering principles and object-oriented techniques. In addition to these features, the user is able to emulate a wide variety of robot computational paradigms. This allows experimentation with, and comparison of, various computational techniques (e.g., hierarchical versus heterarchical control process topologies). The utility of the R²AD virtual machine is demonstrated through applications currently under development