Formal Modeling and Automatic Code Synthesis for Robot System

Abstract

Robot control systems are complex cyber-physical systems which are difficult to develop. In this paper, we present a formal model-based automatic code synthesis method which can generate executable C++ code running on the world-wide used Robot Operating System (ROS). The internal interaction behaviors of robot systems are modeled as a network of timed automata. The safety requirements and specifications related to the model are formalized as CTL formulas and verified by Uppaal. We design a code synthesis method to generate the executable C++ code from the verified model. Compared to existing code generators based on timed automata, our method supports more complex structures and advanced features such as timer and committed location, and provides the important abstraction and mapping of ROS instructions, which realize the seamless connection between the generated code and ROS. A case study of grasping a cup by a robot with seven degrees of freedom manipulator is conducted and the generated codes are successfully applied to a ROS development environment.