Robotic software systems: From code-driven to model-driven designs

Engineering the software development process in robotics is one of the basic necessities towards industrial-strength service robotic systems. A major challenge is to make the step from code-driven to model-driven systems. This is essential to replace hand-crafted single-unit systems by systems composed out of components with explicitly stated properties. Furthermore, this fosters reuse by separating robotics knowledge from short-cycled implementational technologies. Altogether, this is one but important step towards ldquoablerdquo robots. This paper reports on a practical approach to gain more insights into how a model-driven software approach can be applied to robotics systems.