Embedded Software Development with Projectional Language Workbenches

This paper describes a novel approach to embedded software development. Instead of using a combination of C code and modeling tools, we propose an approach where modeling and programming is unified using projectional language workbenches. These allow the incremental, domain-specific extension of C and a seamless integration between the various concerns of an embedded system. The paper does not propose specific extensions to C in the hope that everybody will use them; rather, the paper illustrates the benefits of domain specific extension using projectional editors. In the paper we describe the problems with the traditional approach to embedded software development and how the proposed approach can solve them. The main part of the paper describes our modular embedded language, a proof-of-concept implementation of the approach based on JetBrains MPS. We implemented a set of language extensions for embedded programming, such as state machines, tasks, type system extensions as well as a domain specific language (DSL) for robot control. The language modules are seamlessly integrated, leading to a very efficient way for implementing embedded software.