Functional Programming of Behavior-Based Systems

In this paper, I describe a simple functional programming language, GRL, in which most of the characteristic features of the popular behavior-based robot architectures can be concisely written as reusable software abstractions. This makes it easier to write clear, modular code, to mix and match arbitration mechanisms, and to experiment with variations on existing mechanisms. I describe the compilation process for the language, our experiences with it, and issues of efficiency, expressiveness, and code size relative to other languages.