Extending Kouretes Statechart Editor for executing statechart-based robotic behavior models

Abstract

The development of high-level behavior for autonomous robots is a time-consuming task even for experts. The Kouretes Statechart Editor (KSE) is a Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tool, which allows to easily specify a desired robot behavior as a statechart model utilizing a variety of base robot functionalities (vision, localization, locomotion, motion skills, communication) developed within the Monas robotic software architecture framework. This thesis presents an extension to KSE, which allows to define generic agent behaviors using automatic framework-independent code generation, as long as the underlying software framework is written in the C++ programming language. This way a user can program behaviors for physical robots or software agents that can be executed on any platform using any C++ software framework. This thesis demonstrates the transparent use of the extended KSE in the SimSpark 3D soccer simulation, the Wumpus world, and the Starcraft Broodwar strategy game.