Master Slave state machines
 

I'm programming autonomous robots with IsoMax on IsoPod and am curious about multiple state machines. I've come across the terms "Master - Slave machines" in a few posts on the forum, but am unsure of implementation. In particular, in the thread:
http://www.newmicros.com/discussion...s=&threadid=926
The post by DennisD makes sense in terms of "lowest priority to highest priority" in setting various variables that several different machines may access - makes a lot of sense. But in a response, the "master - slave" terminology was raised again.

I searched the IsoPod docs, and could not find this explained. I guess my question is: Is the master-slave machine terminoloty a paradigm, or are there certain explicit commands to make one machine in a machine chain a "master"? Thanks.

Very explicitly: When I say master-slave I usually mean the master has control over the slaves actual state. This is accomplished with the phrase SET-STATE in the master machine.

So, as if there were an ultimate transition from any slave state to any other slave state, the master decides which state it wants the slave to be in and puts it there, without any required cooperation by the slave.

Cooperative state machines can use flags, variables or the states of other machines to be active in transitions, and allow changes of states accordingly. Masters do not need anything in a slave to force transitions into other states.

Does that make the concept clear?

Ah, Yes!

In machine A ( master ):

IN-STATE ASTATE1
CONDITION < something >
CAUSES BSTATEn SET-STATE < other stuff >
THEN-STATE ASTATE2 TO-HAPPEN

Of course, Thanks!