Robot Simulator

Instructions

Write a robot simulator.

A robot factory's test facility needs a program to verify robot movements.

The robots have three possible movements:

• turn right
• turn left
• advance

Robots are placed on a hypothetical infinite grid, facing a particular direction (north, east, south, or west) at a set of {x,y} coordinates, e.g., {3,8}, with coordinates increasing to the north and east.

The robot then receives a number of instructions, at which point the testing facility verifies the robot's new position, and in which direction it is pointing.

• The letter-string "RAALAL" means:
  • Turn right
  • Advance twice
  • Turn left
  • Advance once
  • Turn left yet again
• Say a robot starts at {7, 3} facing north. Then running this stream of instructions should leave it at {9, 4} facing west.

This exercise does require some kind of global state for your robot. In erlang this can be done in various ways (starting with most idiomatic one):

1. Use some gen_* from OTP
2. Roll your own process and receive messages in a loop and pass the state as parameter around.
3. Roll your own process and use the process dictionary.