Altaira: A rule-based visual language for small mobile robots

Altaira is a visual language intended for the control of small mobile (e.g. LEGO) robots. It is a rule-based language, combining information from sensors, navigation, and current state to determine actions to be taken by the robot and changes required in the system state. The language is simple enough to be used by children to develop simple robotic behaviors, but powerful enough to have been used to solve the compulsory and impromptu problems used in the 1997 Visual Programming Challenge, as well as to implement a standard Turing Machine demonstration algorithm (unary addition). The language is novel in its explicit, separate representation of local and global state, and in its uniform treatment of state and sensor inputs, and of state and actuator outputs, in a visual environment. (C) 1998 Academic Press Limited.