Reusability and Modifiability in Robotics Software (Extended Version)

TL;DR

The design of the software of the microcontroller unit of a weeding robot based on the Process Control architectural style and design patterns yields more reusable components and an easily modifiable and extensible program.

Abstract

We show the design of the software of the microcontroller unit of a weeding robot based on the Process Control architectural style and design patterns. The design consists of 133 modules resulting from using 8 design patterns for a total of 30 problems. As a result the design yields more reusable components and an easily modifiable and extensible program. Design documentation is also presented. Finally, the implementation (12 KLOC of C++ code) is empirically evaluated to prove that the design does not produce an inefficient implementation.

Figures (9)

• Figure 1: The weeding Robot (WR)
• Figure 2: Remote control
• Figure 3: Hardware of the weeding robot
• Figure 4: Process Control architecture of the robot MCU software
• Figure 5: High level diagram of the MCU software