The PE Control System

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:

Queries:

which are some simple reports about the current robot configuration, previous configuration, general information about the system, the platforms, and the subsystems of the prototyping environment. Figure 40 shows a query for the current robot configuration.

 
Figure 40: The current robot configuration window.  

Actions:

which are the actual operations that control the CI. these actions include updating the constraints and the update rules, compiling the CI after including the new constraints and update rules, activating, and terminating the CI. Figure 41 shows one of these operations which is updating the constraints.

 
Figure 41: Updating the design constraints through the PECS.  

Reports:

which are operations to manage the reports in the system, and to send and receive reports to and from the subsystems. The report can be text, graph, figure, postscript, or data file. Each report is saved with its type, date, sender, and the file that contains the report contents.