Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!att!dptg!ulysses!ucbvax!hplabs!hplabsb!mgsmith
From: mgsmith@hplabsb.HP.COM (Michael Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Subject: Re: robot control software
Message-ID: <5884@hplabsb.HP.COM>
Date: 18 Oct 90 15:59:55 GMT
References: <65275@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Reply-To: mgsmith@hplabsb.UUCP (Michael Smith)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Labs, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 34

>I'm wondering what people use for interface with robots...I mean not
>the actual a/d stuff, but what languages, what type of communication.
>I think a worthwhile thesis would be a language that is modular enough
>to communicate with any interface you use/design, but doesnt require
>a mastery of C to get a robot to navigate...

I am a strong believer in standards.  I feel that if you develop 
YARL (Yet Another Robot Language), you will follow the footsteps
of many who have failed to have a significant impact.  At 
Hewlett-Packard we have found robot languages have significant limitations
so we do virtually all of our robot programming in C.  You might
therefore think that this is a good reason to develop a better robot
language. The problem with this reasoning is that by the time you
develop a better robot specific language, C will have also been improved.
In the last few years for example, C++, Concurent C, and Saber-C have
been introduced.  There are great number of people working on standard
languages such as C because the use of these languages is so widespread.  The
robot industry is relatively minuscule.  Therefore I don't think that
we will see a good robot specific language in the near future.

This doesn't mean that there is no work to be done in computer
science for robotics though.  Robots continue to be difficult to
use regardless of the language involved.  Work needs to be done
creating libraries for robot control using languages such as C and C++.
Work also needs to be done in user-interfaces and databases for 
robotics.  I think that effort concentrated on these subjects 
might actually reach fruition.  I will be publishing a paper at
the 1991 IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation on what we
are working on at Hewlett-Packard.  This is 6 months from now
so you out there in net-land will have to wait a while longer 
before you can fully denigrate our work.

Mike Smith
HP Labs