From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fd6dd,c78177ec2e61f4ac X-Google-Attributes: gidfd6dd,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,c78177ec2e61f4ac X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Jan Galkowski Subject: Re: ada and robots Date: 1997/06/04 Message-ID: <3395A015.41C67EA6@digicomp.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 246093129 References: <338CDA96.53EA@halcyon.com> <338F5D7D.6C03@tiac.net> <338F9D05.5EB3@bix.com> <01bc6dfe$9f580d80$21fa82c1@xhv46.dial.pipex.com> Organization: Digicomp Research Corporation Newsgroups: comp.robotics.misc,comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-06-04T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Nick Roberts wrote: > [snip] > > I think I'd go further and suggest that a higher level language than Ada > might be more suitable to your purpose (depending on what you are really > trying to do). Are you familiar with Prolog or Lisp? There are many > different robotics-specific languages, also. You may even find that using a > programming language of any kind is not what you require (perhaps an > adaptive learning system implemented at hardware level would work better). I agree with Nick. Although lowest level control of motors and sensors might well be done with C++, as well as calculations which just have to be fast, things like motion planning, force feedback, assembly planning, interpretation of touch fields are all things that cry for higher order implementation. A characteristic of assembly control is that one needs to consider that every action one tries may fail, and plan a backup route for it. Thus, if this were done in Ada, you'd put a failure handler with a different body about each and every motion statement. This is verbose. I've never used it for robot programming, even in a pretending way, but I've often thought Icon, with its builtin treatment of failures, might be a good thing to use. > What are you trying to achieve, ultimately? Yes, definitely: "Robot programming" isn't a monolithic application. There are the hobbyists robots, there are the relatively unintelligent repetition-based robots for which no programming language is suitable (programmed by motion macros), and then there are sophisticated systems which try mechanical assemblies. > [snip] -- Jan Theodore Galkowski, developer, statistician, Digicomp Research Corporation, Ithaca, NY 14850-5720 jan@digicomp.com (also jtgalkowski@worldnet.att.net)