DSLs in robotics: A case study in programming self-reconfigurable robots

Robotic systems blend hardware and software in a holistic way that intrinsically raises many crosscutting concerns such as concurrency, uncertainty, and time constraints. These concerns make programming robotic systems challenging as expertise from multiple domains needs to be integrated conceptually and technically. Programming languages play a central role in providing a higher level of abstraction. This briefing presents a case study on the evolution of domain-specific languages based on modular robotics. The case study on the evolution of domain-specific languages is based on a series of DSL prototypes developed over five years for the domain of modular, self-reconfigurable robots.