The CI as described above has no user interface. To be able to control and manage the coordination between the subsystems, the PE control system (PECS) was implemented with some functionalities that enable the user to have some control over the CI.
The PECS is on top of the simple DBMS and a simple compiler for the update rules and the constraints. The user specifies the constraints and/or the update rules using a certain format (a language), then the compiler transforms this to C code that will be integrated with the system for constraint checking, and for applying the update rules. The compiler consists of two parts, a parser and a code generator. In the first phase the complexity of the compiler was reduced by making the user language less sophisticated. Later on this can be easily replaced by a more complicated compiler with an easier interface and more sophisticated error checking and optimization capabilities. A schematic view of the PECS is shown in Figure 38. Figure 39 shows the user interface for the PECS.
Figure 38: Schematic overview of the PECS.
Figure 39: The main window for the PE control system.
The PECS functions include:
Figure 40: The current robot configuration window.
Figure 41: Updating the design constraints through the PECS.