[chbot] Simple robot programming

[Morris]

Thanks for the summary and links!

classicladder is interesting! Looks to be active and a lot more than a
simple ladder logic editor/executor.


> I don't know whether the execution engine is separated from the drawing 
> tool. The web-page was last updated in 2009, so it might still be 
> maintained.


"It can run on little embedded platforms (no GTK interface dependance,
and number objects to allocate for less memory usage)." strongly implies
that the execution engine can be used stand-alone. However I suspect it
would not be a trivial amount of work to get it to the point I could use
it for my own uses!

Cheers

On Wed, 2009-07-01 at 17:18 +1200, Stephen Irons wrote:

> A PLC is just a robot used to control industrial machinery, and PLCs can 
> do a wide variety of tasks. IEC 61131-3 specifies five languages for 
> programming PLCs: Ladder Diagram (LD), Instruction List (IL), Structured 
> Text (ST), Function Block Diagram (FB) and Sequential Function Chart 
> (SFC). IL is exactly the same as LD, except using text notation rather 
> than diagrams. ST is a Pascal-like programming language and adds nothing 
> that any other imperative language can provide, and is probably not as 
> well-defined as modern languages.. FB adds the ability to incorporates 
> nested blocks of the other languages, and is very useful. SFC adds 
> state-machine like behaviour.
> 
> The combination of LD, FB and SFC is very powerful.
> 
> As Charles mentioned, there are at least three parts to the system: the 
> drawing tool, the compiler and the execution engine. An almost-essential 
> additional part is a debugger.
> 
> In a previous job, I ported a (commercial) PLC execution engine to run 
> on a 2 MHz 68HC11, so a WRT-style router will certainly have the oomph 
> to do it.
> 
> The drawing tool, compiler and debugger were Windows-hosted.
> 
> The drawing tool included support for all five IEC 61131-3 languages. 
> The drawing tool also included software-engineering utilities such as 
> version control, documentation generation, etc.
> 
> The compiler generated byte-codes that were loaded into the target and run.
> 
> The debugger connected via any available channel (of course, you had to 
> port the communication code), and you monitor the states of inputs, 
> outputs and variables, could set breakpoints and watchpoints in all 
> sorts of ways.
> 
> The execution engine was very standard ANSI C, so could be ported to 
> just about anything.
> 
> The name of the system was IsaGraf, and they are still around. The whole 
> system cost a lot, but was far cheaper to buy than to develop ourselves.
> 
> As far as I know, there are no Linux-hosted tools that do all of this. 
> However, there are a number of places to look:
> 
> http://membres.lycos.fr/mavati/classicladder/ includes LD and SFC. I 
> don't know whether the execution engine is separated from the drawing 
> tool. The web-page was last updated in 2009, so it might still be 
> maintained.
> 
> http://mat.sourceforge.net/ looks interesting, but they don't seem to be 
> very active: last updated 2006.
> 
> Stephen Irons
> 
> 
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