By how much should a general purpose programming language be extended to become a multi-robot system programming language?

The paper fives the answer to the question formulated in the title for the case of manipulator-level languages [1]. Theoretical considerations show that regardless of the type and number of robots: and cooperating devices used in the system as well as irrespective of the number and kind of sensors included in the system, a general purpose language has to be extended by a single instruction with a rather complex semantics. Due to this complexity it is more convenient to introduce two, much simpler instructions. The paper also presents the method of implementing those instructions in a hierarchical distributed control system. The presented approach has been used in the implementation of MRROC/MRROC++ robot programming libraries/languages. The programmer uses predefined library modules to construct the controller structure solving a specific multi-robot task. The structure is fine-tuned to the task at hand by supplying adequate motion generators in a plug-in fashion. The practical validity of the formal approach followed in the implementation of MRROC and MRROC++ has been positively verified on diverse robotic tasks.