Tailoring the MontiArcAutomaton Component & Connector ADL for Generative Development

TL;DR

This paper presents MontiArcAutomaton, a flexible framework for robotics software architecture that integrates custom behavior modeling, platform transformation, and generator composition to enhance reuse and adaptability.

Contribution

It introduces a tailored approach for MontiArcAutomaton, enabling application-specific customization of component behaviors and platform transformations in robotics.

Findings

Supports seamless transformation from logical to platform-specific architectures.

Allows integration of application-specific behavior modeling languages.

Enables black-box composition of code generators for different platforms.

Abstract

Component&connector (C&C) architecture description languages (ADLs) combine component-based software engineering and model-driven engineering to increase reuse and to abstract from implementation details. Applied to robotics application development, current C&C ADLs often require domain experts to provide component behavior descriptions as programming language artifacts or as models of a-priori mixed behavior modeling languages. They are limited to specific target platforms or require extensive handcrafting to transform platform-independent software architecture models into platform-specific implementations. We have developed the MontiArcAutomaton framework that combines structural extension of C&C concepts with integration of application-specific component behavior modeling languages, seamless transformation from logical into platform-specific software architectures, and a-posteriori black-box composition of code generators for different robotics platforms. This paper describes the roles and activities for tailoring MontiArcAutomaton to application-specific demands.