The Use of Logic Programming in Task Planning for Robotized Systems

Abstract

Preparing the task for the robotic system takes several steps. Programming a robot, as the last step, is preceded by the analysis of possible variants of its implementation and trajectory planning. However, the first step is to recognize the task and to split it into fragments, according to activity, without the reference how to realize them. The modern robotics seeks the way to shorten the time to of program preparation, developing the so-called "programming at the task level." It consists in writing a program in a language, which is similar to natural one, describing only the basic operations, without going into the details of their realization the robot (like collision-free path selection or communication with the environment through interfaces and sensors). The outcome is, for example the special voice interfaces used in robotized surgery that allow the surgeon to cooperate with assisting robot without the need to divert their attention from the surgical field. In case of industrial robots, this method is treated as the experimental one and the interest is confined to purely scientific. This article discusses some aspects of this method with respect to the first stages of the task planning. A description of the robot’s workspace and defining the basic steps in a language which is similar to natural one, allows the use of logic programming language to generate pseudocode, which eventually leads to the realization of the task. Every activity could be then divided into elementary steps that must be described directly in the robot programming language. The presented method is currently at the early stage of development and does not allow the direct programming of the robot, but the generated pseudocode could be the basis of a complete program.