NOPL - Notification Oriented Programming Language - A New Language, and Its Application to Program a Robotic Soccer Team

This paper presents the development of NOPL (Notification Oriented Programming Language) Version 1.2, and its compiler, to implement a complete solution for a team of robotic soccer players. The NOPL language implements the concepts proposed by the Notification Oriented Paradigm (NOP), that evolves together concepts from both declarative and imperative programming paradigms. At first, a prototypical version of the language and compiler (version 1.0), was developed to evaluate the feasibility of programming within this new paradigm. Although successful, this first version had some limitations, which made difficult the development of complex applications that solve real problems. In this sense, this paper introduces version 1.2 of the NOPL language and compiler, in which is possible to create complex applications in an easier and direct way. This new version is then evaluated in the development of a complete control software for robot soccer matches (Robocup), using a simulator for the Small Size League (SSL) category. The control program developed in NOPL V1.2 was then compared, in terms of code complexity and maintenance level, with functionally equivalent solutions developed with NOPL 1.0 and a previously developed control system, in C++ programming language from the Imperative Paradigm (Object Oriented). Experiments realized with NOPL 1.2 showed its easy of use, allowing for a much more concise expression of rules for a team of 6 robots, when compared to NOPL 1.0 (61% fewer lines of code for the same functionalities).