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A software framework for robotic mediators in smart environments

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Abstract

The experience of full automation without explicit user direction may induce anxiety among smart space users. The use of explicit mediators between users and fully automated systems may help to mitigate users’ anxiety. While robots mediators are one possible solution, several issues remain, including high complexity and limited collaboration between robots and smart space platforms, reducing overall system reliability. This paper proposes the Integrated Control Architecture for Robotic mediator in Smart environments (ICARS) as a solution to improve the integration and reliability of robot mediators within automated smart spaces. Assuming relatively thin network robots as robotic mediators to enable a wide distribution with less cost, ICARS provides a well-organized software framework consisting of three layers to integrate robots and smart spaces: a flexible communication/device model, an adaptive service model for the integrated robot control architecture, and a behavior-based high-level collaboration model. In this paper, we also present details of the design, implementation, and an application scenario conducted with ICARS. The results show that ICARS enables flexible integration of the diverse devices associated with robots and environments, adaptive service provision for collaborative services, and easier development of high-level collaborative applications with decent performance.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (2015R1D1A1A09061480).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Spatial Information Research Section, Electronics and Telecommunication Research Institute (ETRI), Daejeon, Republic of Korea

    Young-Ho Suh & Kang-Woo Lee

  2. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chungnam National University, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

    Eun-Sun Cho

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  1. Young-Ho Suh
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  2. Kang-Woo Lee
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  3. Eun-Sun Cho
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Correspondence to Eun-Sun Cho.

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Suh, YH., Lee, KW. & Cho, ES. A software framework for robotic mediators in smart environments. J Reliable Intell Environ 4, 89–105 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40860-018-0060-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40860-018-0060-7

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