Project Summary

Programming robots can be slow and challenging.  In trying to assist a beginner with the NXT Mindstorms set, I asked myself whether it would not be possible to design an application that could translate English instructions directly into compilable code that the robot could execute.  If successful, it should be of great assistance to those struggling with existing graphic and text-based programming languages.  It could possibly also be of use to those wanting to spend less time on writing computer code.  With this in mind, I embarked on some research, with the aim of designing a tool that could help the robot understand commands written in natural human language. To prove that it was possible to develop such functionality, I decided to limit design and testing to a prototype robot called Tribot and use only a basic set of instructions (including default values and a limited number of variables). The resulting application called SIMPLE not only manages to analyse and translate English sentences into C-code and compile and download these, but it also assists users via prompts that request required information to program the robot effectively.