Robots and Finite-State Machines

By Everett F. Carter, Jr.

Dr. Dobb's Journal February 1997

(a)	STATE-MACHINE PROXIMITY
	   APPEND-STATE IR_SCAN
	   APPEND-STATE LEFT_IR
	   APPEND-STATE RIGHT_IR
	   APPEND-STATE BOTH_IR
	   APPEND-STATE END_IR
(b)	IN-STATE IR_SCAN
	   CONDITION BOTH_IR?
	   CAUSES PROXIMITY_VEC 		 SET_REVERSE ARBITRATE
	   THEN-STATE BOTH_IR
	TO-HAPPEN
(c)	MACHINE-CHAIN ROBOT
	    SENSORS
	    WALKER
	    CONTACT
	    PROXIMITY
	    EXPLORE
	END-MACHINE-CHAIN
(d)	  WALK_FORWARD SET-STATE
	  IR_SCAN      SET-STATE
	  BUMP_SCAN    SET-STATE
	  IDLE         SET-STATE
	  IDLE_MOTION  SET-STATE

Example 1: (a) The PROXIMITY machine; (b) setting up the response of the PROXIMITY machine; (c) linking state machines into a single list of machines, which makes up a composite-state machine; (d) defining the initial state of each state machine.

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