V3CMM: a 3-view component meta-model for model-driven robotic software development

Abstract

There are many voices in the robotics community demanding a qualitative improvement in the robotics software development process and tools, in order to increase product flexibility, adaptability, and overall quality, while reducing its cost and time-to-market. This article describes a first step towards a model-driven approach to robotics software development, based on the definition of highly reusable and platform-independent component-based design models. The proposed approach revolves around the V3CMM modeling language and the definition of different model transformations for deriving both special purpose models (e.g., models suited for analysis or simulation purposes) and lower-level design models, in which platform-specific and application-dependent details can be progressively included. The article describes the tool-chain implemented to support the different stages of the proposed MDE process, including (1) the definition of component-based architectural models, defined using the V3CMM platform-independent modeling language, (2) the automatic transformation of the V3CMM component-based models into equivalent object-oriented designs, described in terms of the UML standard, and (3) the transformation of the UML models into an the Ada 2005 object-oriented programming language. In order to show the feasibility and the benefits of the proposal, a simple (yet complete) case study regarding the design of a Cartesian robot is presented.