An Embedded Software Architecture for Robot with Variable Structures

The application of robotic system has nowadays been vastly incorporated in many domains. To support customized demands, robotic embedded software oftentimes may face the variation challenges on hardware sensor, hardware assembling structure, and hardware platform. Basing on the perspective of software engineering, the paper endeavors to explore the embedded software architecture. We have concluded 2 commonly adopted embedded software architectures, and thus proposed a new 7 layered architecture. The concept of software product line was integrated to engage Feature-Oriented Analysis on a specific domain in designing features of atomic operation interface layer. To describe dynamic function composition of the system, XML configuration file was employed on Architecture Mapping layer. The intended basic functions on the Application layer were composed by Atomic operation. When hardware or software function demand is changed, we only need to modify the XML configuration file. Thus, embedded software portability and software/hardware variability can be enhanced and thereby reduces the impacts of the aforementioned. Basing on the 3 software architectures proposed, we have conducted implementation on LEGO robot module and POB robot module. The results of the experiments indicated that execution efficiency was not distinguishably reduced, and that nearly no impact was performed on robotic actions, which manifested the feasibility of our software architecture.