A decoupled three-layered architecture for service robotics in intelligent environments

To enable the usage of service robots in a smart environment we have developed a decoupled three-layered architecture. The architecture is separated into three parts: hardware abstraction layer, domain level as well as control and collaboration layer. The hardware abstraction layer considers hardware drivers and elementary functions, like inverse kinematics for manipulators. The domain level wraps the hardware in autonomous agents. They offer features in the system, can communicate with each other and are responsible for local task planning. The third layer enables the global task planning and allows the system to solve more complex tasks that are shared between single agents. The layer is based on an ontology to reduce the effort of implementing and incorporating new agents. Purpose of this work is to build a slim, reliable and effective architecture, which is able to work with heterogeneous robot and smart-home hardware. Furthermore, it should be able to solve dynamically tasks with the available resources.

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