Spanda

Lesson 1 — Hello, robot

Goal: Understand what a Spanda program looks like and run your first one.

Example: examples/basics/01_minimal_robot.sd

What is Spanda?

Spanda is a language for autonomous systems — robots, drones, agents, and edge devices where sensors, AI, actuators, and safety rules belong in the source code, not scattered across scripts and config files.

A Spanda program describes a robot: what it can sense, what it can move, and what behaviors it runs.

Your first program

module basics.minimal;

robot TutorialBot {
  actuator wheels: DifferentialDrive;

  behavior greet() {
    wheels.stop();
  }
}

Piece	Meaning
`module`	Names this file in a multi-file project (optional for single-file demos)
`robot`	The autonomous system you are programming
`actuator wheels: DifferentialDrive`	A drive system the robot controls
`behavior greet()`	A named entry point the runtime can execute
`wheels.stop()`	A safe command sent to the actuator

Spanda is not object-oriented in the Java sense. You do not subclass Robot. You declare hardware and behaviors directly.

Try it

spanda check examples/basics/01_minimal_robot.sd
spanda run examples/basics/01_minimal_robot.sd

check — type-check without running. Catches unit errors, unsafe AI usage, and missing symbols at compile time.
run — execute against the simulated backend (no physical robot required).

Create your own project

spanda init my_bot
cd my_bot

Edit src/main.sd with a robot block, then:

spanda check src/main.sd
spanda run src/main.sd

See getting-started.md for the full first-project walkthrough.

Key ideas

.sd files — Spanda source extension (think “Spanda definition”).
Robots, not classes — robot { } is the top-level unit of autonomous logic.
Actuators are typed — DifferentialDrive, RobotArm, Gripper, etc. The compiler knows what commands are valid.
Check before run — always run spanda check in CI and before deploy.

Exercise

Create my_bot/src/main.sd with:

A robot named Greeter
One DifferentialDrive actuator
A behavior wave() that calls wheels.stop()

Run spanda check and spanda run.

Next: Lesson 2 — Sensors and safety

This site is open source. Improve this page.