Co-design tool construction using APICES

Abstract

In this paper, we present our approach to automate the development process of co-design tools. We demonstrate with a non-trivial real world example how we can accelerate the tool design process using the software prototyping environment APICES. In a very short time we constructed the tool Dual Dynamics Designer (DDD) which supports a novel methodology in robot software development, DDD allows to edit a complex differential equation-based specification of dynamic robot behavior via an intuitive graphical interface and automatically generates microcontroller code in C as well as a simulation model in Java from it. Speed-up of the tool design process is primarily achieved by a rigorous top-down tool modeling approach in combination with a highly configurable tool frame generator.