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IFIP International Conference on Computer Information Systems and Industrial Management

CISIM 2019: Computer Information Systems and Industrial Management pp 191–209Cite as

Type-Driven Cross-Programming for Android and LEGO Mindstorms Interoperability

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 11703))

Abstract

We present Legodroid, a Java library for Android that allows cross-programming LEGO Mindstorms through an Android device to exploit its extra computational capabilities in a seamless way. From a programmer’s perspective, the paradigm it suggests for programming the EV3 is straightforward and resembles a standard main function in the likes of leJOS, which natively runs on the EV3 side though. Moreover, the library imposes type-driven coding patterns for interacting with motors and sensors, which guide developers in writing correct code with less runtime errors thanks to a rigid discipline over types. This is particularly effective in Android, whose component-based pattern complicates coding of traditional long-running algorithms for robots. Compared to leJOS, Legodroid users reported shorter bugfixing times and a more accessible paradigm for programming the robot, which had a positive impact on how much resources could be put in writing smarter algorithms and sophisticate interactions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    At the time of writing, Legodroid does not support wifi connections, as the bluetooth counterpart is preferable in most cases. A WifiConnection class is expected by design though and will be added in a future update.

  2. 2.

    The EV3 CPU is a 300 MHz TI Sitara AM1808 (ARM926EJ-S Core) with 64 MB of RAM.

  3. 3.

    We refer to the EV3.Api nested static class as Api for brevity.

  4. 4.

    The functional interface \(\texttt {Callable<T>}\) represents functions with no arguments and a result of type \(\texttt {T}\), in the same way as \(\texttt {Supplier<T>}\) does, whose functional type can be written as \(\varnothing \rightarrow \texttt {T}\).

  5. 5.

    Refer to the documentation of EV3 firmware instructions (op-codes opOutput_ Polarity and opOutput_Set_Type) in section 4.9 of [37].

  6. 6.

    In Java 8+ all the mentioned language constructs are equivalent type-wise.

  7. 7.

    Bachelor degree in Computer Science, year 2018-19, at DAIS, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Università Ca’ Foscari, Via Torino, 153, 30172, Venice, VE, Italy

    Alvise Spanò, Agostino Cortesi & Giulio Zausa

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  1. Alvise Spanò
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  2. Agostino Cortesi
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  3. Giulio Zausa
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Correspondence to Alvise Spanò .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Bialystok University of Technology, Bialystok, Poland

    Khalid Saeed

  2. University of Calcutta, Calcutta, India

    Rituparna Chaki

  3. Mihajlo Pupin Institute, Belgrade, Serbia

    Valentina Janev

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Spanò, A., Cortesi, A., Zausa, G. (2019). Type-Driven Cross-Programming for Android and LEGO Mindstorms Interoperability. In: Saeed, K., Chaki, R., Janev, V. (eds) Computer Information Systems and Industrial Management. CISIM 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11703. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28957-7_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28957-7_17

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