Active vision-based robot design involves a variety of techniques and formalisms, from kinematics to control theory, signal processing and computer science. The programming of such systems therefore requires environments with many different functionalities, in a very integrated fashion in order to ensure consistency of the different parts. In significant applications, the correct specification of the global controller is not simple to achieve, as it mixes different levels of behavior, and must respect properties. In this paper we want to advocate the use of a strongly integrated environment able to deal with the design of such systems from the specification of both continuous and discrete parts down to the verification of dynamic behavior. The synchronous language signal is used here as a candidate integrated environment for the design of active vision systems. Our experiments show that signal, while not being an environment devoted to for robotics (but more generally dedicated to control theory and signal processing), presents functionalities and a degree of integration that are relevant to the safe design of active vision-based robotics system.