Exploiting Logic Programming in Robot Applications

Advanced robot programming requires flexible and extensible programming environments, as well as programming languages capable of amalgamating and integrating components implemented according to different technologies. Logic programming can give a valuable contribution thanks to its characteristic features like relational form and declarative interpretation; on the other hand, its peculiar goal of removing control issues from programming seems to make it unsuitable for real robot programming. However, since control constitutes a fundamental issue in any effectively usable logic language, the purpose of this work is to present an architecture for a robot programming environment based on a real logic language like Prolog, properly extended with control capability toward program structuring and concurrence, and to discuss the impact of such an extended logic programming approach in a robotics framework.