SPECIFYING AND VERIFYING ACTIVE VISION-BASED ROBOTIC SYSTEMS WITH THESIGNAL ENVIRONMENT

Active vision-based robot design involves a variety of techniques and formalisms, from kinematics to control theory, signal processing, and computer science. The programming of such systems therefore requires e nvironments with many different functionalities, in a very integrated fashion to ensure consistency of the different parts. In significant a pplications, the correct specification of the global controller is not simple to achieve, as it mixes different levels of behavior and must respect properties. In this paper we advocate the we of a strongly int egrated environment that is able to deal with the design of such syste ms, from the specification of both continuous and discrete parts down to the verification of dynamic behavior The synchronous language SIGNA L is used here as a candidate integrated environment for the design of active vision systems. Our experiments show that SIGNAL, while not be ing an environment devoted to robotics (but more generally dedicated t o control theory and signal processing), presents functionalities and a degree of integration that are relevant to the safe design of an act ive vision-based robotics system.