The manipulator language with the characteristic of a functional programming language

This article describes the motion-oriented robot language IML (interactive manipulator language) with the characteristic of a functional programming language. The main functions of IML are (1) It is possible to describe the iterative motions without using a loop. (2) The user-defined procedures (commands) can be called by specifying the command name. (3) It is possible to describe robot motion (a sequence of the position and orientation of a robot hand) and force magnitude in the task-oriented Cartesian coordinate system (task coordinate system) suitable for robot tasks. Furthermore, it is possible to describe the translation and rotation of the coordinate system without syntactic distinction. (4) As the teaching data can be easily embedded in the language and can be played back in the force control mode, complex task programming becomes easy. In IML, as the user-defined command and the teaching data can be used just as the builtin system command; the system can be extended easily and naturally. In this article these features are described, and it is shown that these functions can be realized with the unified representation by introducing the concept of a functional programming language. The effectiveness of IML was confirmed by actually making a robot perform some tasks programmed in IML.