A Systems Re-engineering Case Study: Programming Robots with occam and Handel-C

This paper introduces a case study exploring some of the legacy issues that may be faced when redeveloping a system. The case study is a robotics system programmed in occam and Handel-C, allowing us to draw comparisons between software and hardware implementations in terms of program architecture, ease of program code verification, and differences in the behaviour of the robot. The two languages used have been selected because of their model of concurrency and their relation to CSP. The case study contributes evidence that re-implementing a system from an abstract model may present implementation specific issues despite maintaining the same underlying program control structure. The paper identifies these problems and suggests a number of steps that could be taken to help mitigate some of the issues.

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