Creating the Architecture of a Translator Framework for Robot Programming Languages

This paper presents a novel approach to facilitate the development and maintenance of translators for industrial robot programming languages. Such translators are widely used in robot simulation and offline programming systems to support programming in the respective native robot language. Our method is based upon a software architecture, that is provided as a complete translator framework. For the developer of a new translator, it offers convenient strategies to concentrate on robot specific language elements during the design and implementation process: fill-in templates, libraries for common functionality, design patterns etc., all tied up with a general translation scheme. In contrast to other compiler construction tools, the developers need not care about the complex details of a whole translator. As a matter of principle, the architecture offers a complete default translator (except for the grammar). Robot specific elements can be held in separate units outside of the actual translator to facilitate maintenance and feature extension. The most probable changes in the translator product life cycle are restricted to the adaptation of these units. Several translators built upon this framework are in actual use in the commercial robot simulation system COSIMIR to support native language robot programming, as well as in the widely used robot programming system COSIROP to verify the syntax of robot programs.