ABSTRACT
This chapter describes programming languages for robots and shows examples and research ideas from which a new generation of languages will develop. It pays attention to programming systems for robot manipulators of the type used for industrial automation, even though some ideas could be applied to mobile robots. The chapter describes some of the solutions and refers the readers to the References for other approaches. It covers basic issues in robot programming, and presents an overview of robot programming languages. The chapter shows methods and problems in describing models of the robot environment. It devotes to the use of sensors and explores issues in task-level programming. The development of programs off-line requires sophisticated programming environments that are not generally available in standard languages, such as FORTRAN or PASCAL. The need to develop a complete programming environment justifies the development of new systems.
