I just ordered the visual sequencer and have a question regarding stopping a sequence in the middle. For example, the bot is in the walking sequence and it encounters an object in its path, can the atom pro pause this sequence and transistion to another sequence?
I would like to develop “sequence modules” and have the atom pro call the right sequence based on sensor input but there is the problem of changes in the enviornment that requires the bot to drop once sequence for another, such as stop walking forward and return to zero before another sequence begins.
Visual SEQ will control the SSC32 board directly, or create Atom 'Bot code for you to include into your program, as I understand it.
There is an emergency stop in SEQ, but I haven’t found a “step” mode, which would be convenient.
Once the sequences are in YOUR 'bot program, you could rewrite them to be executed incrementally (one step at a time) from a list, and the routine called would “step” through the various steps of your sequence. The “step loop” inside this subroutine could then watch a “run flag” to tell when to stop the sequence.
These actions you seek are best described by the “Subsumption” architecture that has been mentioned a few times. Basically they are many small routines that get executed when sensor conditions dictate. The 'bot may be walking along in a “navigate” task (mode), when a higher priority task is kicked off from sensor inputs, such as “FLEE”. After the danger (proximity alarm) shuts down, the Flee task terminates, and the navigate task is no longer inhibited and takes over again. Cite MIT, Rodny. See Subsumption papers on the IK group below (or Google!).
