Abstract
In this paper we make a comparative study of some successful software architectures for mobile robot systems. The objective is to gather experience for the future design of a new robot architecture. Three architectures are studied more closely, Saphira, TeamBots and BERRA. Qualities such as portability, ease of use, software characteristics, programming and run-time efficiency are evaluated. In order to get a true hands-on evaluation, all the architectures are implemented on a common hardware robot platform. A simple reference application is made with each of these systems. All the steps necessary to achieve this are discussed and compared. Run-time data are also gathered. Conclusions regarding the results are made, and a sketch for a new architecture is made based on these results.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Albus, J., McCain, H., and Lumi, R. 1987. NBS standard reference model for telerobot control system architecture (NASREM). Technical Report 1235, National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD.
Andersson, M., Orebäck, A., Lindström, M., and Christensen, H. 1999. ISR:Anintelligent service robot. In Intelligent Sensor Based Robotics, Springer Verlag: Heidelberg.
Arkin, R.C. 1986. Path planning for a vision-based autonomous robot. In Proceedings of the SPIE Conference on Mobile Robots.
Arkin, R.C. 1987. Towards cosmopolitan robots: Intelligent navigation in extended man-made environments. Technical Report COINS 87–80, also Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Computer and Information Science.
Arkin, R.C. 1990. Integrating behavioral, perceptual, and world knowledge in reactive navigation. In Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Vol. 6, pp. 105–122.
Balch, T. 2000. TeamBots. Available at world wide web, www.teambots.org.
Barbera, A., Albus, J., Fitzgerald, M., and Haynes, L. 1984. RCS: The NBS real-time control system. In Robots 8 Conference and Exposition, Detroit, MI.
Black, A. and Taylor, P. 1997. Festival speech synthesis system: System Documentation. Human Communication Research Centre, University of Edinburgh, 1.1 edition.
Bonasso, R.P. et al. 1997. Experiences with an architecture for intelligent, reactive agents. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificiall Intelligence, 9(2): 237–256.
Booch, G., Rumnaugh, J., and Jacobsen, I. 1999. The Unified Modeling Language User Guide, Object Technology Series, Addison-Wesley: Reading, MA.
Brooks, R. 1987. A hardware retargetable distributed layered architecture for mobile robot control. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.
Fedor, C. 1993. TCX—An interprocess communication system for building robotic architectures. Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.
Fink, G.A. 1999. Developing HMM-based recognizers with ESMERALDA. In Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 1692, Springer: Berlin, pp. 229–234.
Firby, R.J. 1989. Adaptive execution in complex dynamic worlds. Ph.D. Thesis, Yale University.
Fujita, M. and Kageyama, K. 1997. An open architecture for robot entertainment. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents, pp. 435–442.
Fujita, M., Kitano, H., and Kageyama, K. 1999. A reconfigurable robot platform. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 29(2/3): 119–132.
Gabriel, R.P. 1993. Lisp: Good news bad news. Available at world wide web, http://www.ai.mit.edu/docs/articles/good-news/goodnews. html.
Konolidge, K. 1997. COLBERT: A language for reactive control in Saphira. In German Conference on Artificial Intellgence, Freiburg.
Konolige, K. and Myers, K. 1996. The Saphira Architecture for Autonomous Mobile Robots, SRI International.
Lindström, M., Orebäck, A., and Christensen, H. 2000. Berra: A research architecture for service robots. In International Conference on Robotics and Automation.
Messina et al. 1999. Component specifications for robotics integration. Autonomous Robots, 6(3): 247–264.
Nomadic. 2000. Nomadic Technlogies Inc. Available at world wide web, www.robots.com.
OMG. 2001. CORBA. Available atworld wide web,www.corba.org.
O'sullivan, J., Haigh, K.Z., and Armstrong, G.D. 1997. Xavier Manual, internal manual.
Real World Interface. 1999. Mobility robot integration. Available at world wide web, Tech sheet, www.isr.com/rwi/.
Saffiotti, A., Ruspini, E., and Konolige, K. 1993. Blending reactivity and goal-directedness in a fuzzy controller. In Second International Conference on Fuzzy Systems, San Francisco, CA, Vol. 14, pp. 134–139.
Schmidt, D.C. 1994. The ADAPTIVE communication environment: Object-oriented network programming components for developing client/server applications. In 11th and 12th Sun Users Group Conference.
Schmidt, D.C. and Suda, T. 1994. The service configurator framework. In IEEE Second International Workshop on Configurable Distributed Systems.
Simmons, R. 1994. Structured control for autonomous robots. In IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation.
Szyperski, C. 1998. Component Software: Beyond Object-Oriented Programming, Addison-Wesley: Reading, MA.
Veldhuizen, T.L. 1998. Arrays in Blitz++. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Scientific Computing in Object-Oriented Parallel Environments (ISCOPE'98), Springer-Verlag: Berlin.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Orebäck, A., Christensen, H.I. Evaluation of Architectures for Mobile Robotics. Autonomous Robots 14, 33–49 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020975419546
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020975419546