Property service architecture for distributed robotic and sensor systems

This paper presents a general architecture for creating complex distributed software systems, the Property Service architecture. The system may contain resources like robots, sensors, and different kinds of system services, such as controller units, data storages or collective model of the environment. This architecture contains several solutions and distributed system design methods to develop advanced and complex systems. It provides also a possibility to add new resources to the system easily and during the operation. Each service has very simple generalized interface. This meets the requirements of distributed robotic applications, such as remote operation, multi-robot cooperation and the robot’s internal operation. The simplicity of the interface also provides a possibility to scale down the service even on the low-cost microcontrollers used in small-sized robots. The main features of the architecture are dynamic properties of the resources, automatic reconfiguration and the high level of reusability of the implemented methods and algorithms. Index Terms – distributed robots and systems, multi-robot systems, sensor networks, Property Service architecture