[plexil-support] Interfacing for integration with a real robot

[Hector F. C. R. <hec...@gm...>]

Dear support team,

My name is Héctor, and I’m involved in a robotics project. We are interested in using Plexil as the core language for the specification of robot’s tasks, but a little advice is required...

We already have configured the universal executive in the robot’s controller hardware (an intel galileo board) and everything is working well, but now I’m looking for a way to integrate such executive with robot’s sensing devices and actuators (gears, servomotors, etc). I was able to perform the integration through the UDP adapter, but as far I understand this intended only for interoperability between executives, not for interfacing with external systems.

Now I’m looking for a way to integrate ‘lookupOn’/‘lookUpOnChange’ events with information provided by a micro controller trough a serial port. The official documentation (http://plexil.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Advanced_PLEXIL_Interfacing#Construction) states that we have to create a C++ shared library that implements the ‘InterfaceAdapter’ in order to enable an interface with external systems. I understand the idea, but, could you please provide us a sample implementation of a custom InterfaceAdapter, and an example of how to integrate the generated dynamic library in the <Interfaces> configuration file?… If there is already an example in the distribution, I would appreciate if you indicate me where it is located...

Just for curiosity, could it be possible to use a a socket-based adapter -as an alternative to the C++ adapters- in order to achieve the same interfacing scenario? (in this case, I would implement a socket server that ‘talk’ directly with the hardware according with the received events).


Sincerely yours,

Héctor