The development of software applications for robotics is a challenging task for engineers due to the inherent parallelism of the code and the multitude of flexible factors that must be considered. Robotic assembly, a specific type of robotic application, involves the construction of pre-determined products using designated pieces. This further complicates the engineering task, as not only the robots must be considered but also the construction materials and the product itself. While several specialized solutions for robotic assembly exist, they are typically handcrafted and are tightly bound to the robots and materials they were designed for. Thus, it is hard for these solutions to be extended to respond to changes and newly added modules. This work proposes a model-driven approach to robotic assembly supporting diverse domains that can accommodate the seamless integration of robots. Relational reference attribute grammars are used for both metamodels and runtime models. To assess the feasibility and effectiveness of our proposed approach, we conducted a case study based on an industrial research project.

Virtual worlds are increasingly being developed to provide a navigable space for museum collections. The Virtual Sydney Rocks (VSR) [3] is one such virtual world that has been constructed as an authentic representation of the area of first European settlement in Australia 230 years ago - from a time just before its settlement until the present day. We constructed two versions of a game for children in order to motivate interaction with, and learning of, the historical content of the VSR. One of these game versions contained a number of fantasy design elements with the idea that their inclusion would motivate children to engage with VSR content in a pleasurable way. A preliminary study with a small number of school-aged children was not able to show that the inclusion of fantasy elements affected either the comprehension of historical facts or the quality of moral judgements made by the children. This study did, however, provide some evidence that interactivity with the relevant parts of the virtual world may have affected the retention of historical facts.