A flexiblesoftwarearchitecture for multi-modal servicerobots

Inthispaperwepropose anovelconcept forthe programming ofmulti-modal service robots. Thepresented soft- warearchitecture eases thedevelopment ofhigh-level applications forservice robots. Thesoftware architecture isbaseduponthe Roblet-Technology, whichisapowerful mediumforrobots. It introduces thepossibility todevelop, compile andexecute an application ononeworkstation. Since theRoblet-Technology uses Javathedevelopment isindependent oftheoperation system. Withthefeature ofrunning programs asadistributed software, theframework allows running algorithms whichneedgreat computation powerondifferent machines whichprovide this power. Inthis way,itgreatly improves programming andtesting ofapplications inservice robotics. Theconcept isevaluated inthe context oftheservice robotTASERoftheTAMSInstitute atthe University ofHamburg. Thisrobotconsists ofamobile platform withtwomanipulators equipped withartificial hands. Several multimodal input andoutput devices forinteraction roundoff therobot. I.INTRODUCTION Thefield ofservice robotics hasseenalotofadvances over thelast years, butstill lacks usability androbustness. Wethink that onereason forthis istheabsence ofaunifying software architecture that handles themiscellaneous challenges which thesoftware engineers encounter. Thesechallenges varyfrom thedevelopment ofdistributed applications tothehandling ofthediversities ofdifferent hardware platforms present in service robotics. Inthispaperwe propose a framework thatmeetsthese challanges andenables aprogrammer todevelop advanced ap- plications forservice robots. A mainfeature oftheframework istheability tointegrate existing solutions tospecific robotic problems. We willshowthatitispossible toencapsulate libraries formotioncontrol formanipulators aswellasfor mobile robots. A variety ofhardware devices connected tothe service robot will beintegrated into thearchitecture. A layer ofabstraction will generalize theaccess tothese devices. Thus, developed applications canbetransferred toother robotic systems without changes. Theproposed approach isapplied totheservice robot of theTAMSInstitute attheUniversity ofHamburg. TheTAMS- Service-Robot (TASER) isbuilt fromstandard components. It isamobile robot withtwomanipulators andamulti-modal man-machine interface. Figure 1showsTASER.Therobot operates during normal workdays inanoffice environment. It