A Reference Architecture for Deploying Component-Based Robot Software and Comparison with Existing Tools

This article discusses the problem of deploying component-based software for a robotic system, including both the initial deployment and re-deployment at run-time to account for changing requirements and conditions. We begin by evaluating a set of tools used for all or part of the deployment activity. The evaluated tools are the OMG DEPL specification, Chef, Ansible, Salt, Puppet, roslaunch and Orocos Deployer/ROCK. These tools were chosen to cover a range of capabilities and styles. The evaluation identifies a set of core roles found in the deployment activity, and based on this we propose a reference architecture for a set of tools that satisfy the deployment activity. This reference architecture provides a foundation for future work in developing and evaluating tools that can be used in deployment.