ContrACT: a software environment for developing control architecture

Robotic software is now one of essential part of robotic system development, therefore software control architecture design methods and concepts, often inspired by engineering software field, are necessary within a robotic project to enhance evolution, modularity and re-usability, and to avoid redesign costs [1]. Control software architecture design approaches are usually classified into three main categories: • Reactive architectures are built by gathering several modules called behaviors. Each behavior reacts continuously to the situation sensed by the perception system [4]. Actuators control values are obtained from a weighted summation of all commands generated by these modules. The complexity of this method lies in weights adjustment allowing a good reaction and keeping global objective [5][8]. • Deliberative architectures are built in several levels, usually three. Decisions are taken in the higher level; the intermediate level is in charge of controlling and supervising. The low level deals with all periodical treatment related to the instrumentation, such actuator control or measuring instrument management [3]. • Hybrid architectures are a mixed of two previous ones. Usually these are structured in three layers: the deliberative layer, based on planning, the control execution layer and a functional reactive layer [6][7][9][11].