Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications

Managing a Fleet of Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) using Cloud Robotics Platform

In this paper, we provide details of implementing a system for managing a fleet of autonomous mobile robots (AMR) operating in a factory or a warehouse premise. While the robots are themselves autonomous in its motion and obstacle avoidance capability, the target destination for each robot is provided by a global planner. The global planner and the ground vehicles (robots) constitute a multi agent system (MAS) which communicate with each other over a wireless network. Three different approaches are explored for implementation. The first two approaches make use of the distributed computing based Networked Robotics architecture and communication framework of Robot Operating System (ROS) itself while the third approach uses Rapyuta Cloud Robotics framework for this implementation. The comparative performance of these approaches are analyzed through simulation as well as real world experiment with actual robots. These analyses provide an in-depth understanding of the inner working of the Cloud Robotics Platform in contrast to the usual ROS framework. The insight gained through this exercise will be valuable for students as well as practicing engineers interested in implementing similar systems else where. In the process, we also identify few critical limitations of the current Rapyuta platform and provide suggestions to overcome them.Comment: 14 pages, 15 figures, journal pape

A Model-Driven Engineering Approach for ROS using Ontological Semantics

This paper presents a novel ontology-driven software engineering approach for the development of industrial robotics control software. It introduces the ReApp architecture that synthesizes model-driven engineering with semantic technologies to facilitate the development and reuse of ROS-based components and applications. In ReApp, we show how different ontological classification systems for hardware, software, and capabilities help developers in discovering suitable software components for their tasks and in applying them correctly. The proposed model-driven tooling enables developers to work at higher abstraction levels and fosters automatic code generation. It is underpinned by ontologies to minimize discontinuities in the development workflow, with an integrated development environment presenting a seamless interface to the user. First results show the viability and synergy of the selected approach when searching for or developing software with reuse in mind.Comment: Presented at DSLRob 2015 (arXiv:1601.00877), Stefan Zander, Georg Heppner, Georg Neugschwandtner, Ramez Awad, Marc Essinger and Nadia Ahmed: A Model-Driven Engineering Approach for ROS using Ontological Semantic

The Penetration of Internet of Things in Robotics: Towards a Web of Robotic Things

As the Internet of Things (IoT) penetrates different domains and application areas, it has recently entered also the world of robotics. Robotics constitutes a modern and fast-evolving technology, increasingly being used in industrial, commercial and domestic settings. IoT, together with the Web of Things (WoT) could provide many benefits to robotic systems. Some of the benefits of IoT in robotics have been discussed in related work. This paper moves one step further, studying the actual current use of IoT in robotics, through various real-world examples encountered through a bibliographic research. The paper also examines the potential ofWoT, together with robotic systems, investigating which concepts, characteristics, architectures, hardware, software and communication methods of IoT are used in existing robotic systems, which sensors and actions are incorporated in IoT-based robots, as well as in which application areas. Finally, the current application of WoT in robotics is examined and discussed

Supporting active and healthy aging with advanced robotics integrated in smart environment

The technological advances in the robotic and ICT fields represent an effective solution to address specific societal problems to support ageing and independent life. One of the key factors for these technologies is the integration of service robotics for optimising social services and improving quality of life of the elderly population. This chapter aims to underline the barriers of the state of the art, furthermore the authors present their concrete experiences to overcome these barriers gained at the RoboTown Living Lab of Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna within past and current projects. They analyse and discuss the results in order to give recommendations based on their experiences. Furthermore, this work highlights the trend of development from stand-alone solutions to cloud computing architecture, describing the future research directions

CPS Platform Approach to Industrial Robots: State of the Practice, Potentials, Future Research Directions

Approaches, such as Cloud Robotics, Robot-as-a-Service, merged Internet of Things and robotics, and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) in production, show that the industrial robotics domain experiences a paradigm shift that increasingly links robots in real-life factories with virtual reality. However, despite the growing body of research to date, though insightful, the paradigm shift to CPS in industrial robotics remains an under-researched area. Findings from the present paper make several contributions to the current state of research: We provide a potentially reusable framework of analysis and apply this framework in order to reveal whether and to what extent the industrial robotics branch implements abilities and characteristics of CPS. We examine the top five industrial robot manufacturers ABB, Fanuc, Kawasaki, Kuka, and Yaskawa and identify considerable, current implementations. However, concerning one of three perspectives—the perspective on CPS as industry platform constructs, takes the industrial robotics branch only certain small steps towards CPS platforms. We discuss them and outline a set of business model patterns that can transform product innovations, enabled by abilities and characteristics of CPS, into business model innovations in the industrial robot domain. In order to enable the industry to exploit the full potential of industrial robots understood as CPS, we question the right degree of openness in the context of industry platform constructs. Our methodological approach combines conceptual with empirical research

Towards explainability in robotics: A performance analysis of a cloud accountability system

[EN] Understanding why a robot's behaviour was triggered is a growing concern to get human-acceptable social robots. Every action, expected and unexpected, should be able to be explained and audited. The formal model proposed here deals with different information levels, from low-level data, such as sensors' data logging; to high-level data that provide an explanation of the robot's behaviour. This study examines the impact on the robot system of a custom log engine based on a custom ROS logging node and investigates pros and cons when used together with a NoSQL database locally and in a cloud environment. Results allow to characterize these alternatives and explore the best strategy for offering a fully log-based accountability engine that maximizes the mapping between robot behaviour and robot logs.SIInstituto Nacional de CiberseguridadMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovació

Adaptive Robot Framework: Providing Versatility and Autonomy to Manufacturing Robots Through FSM, Skills and Agents

207 p.The main conclusions that can be extracted from an analysis of the current situation and future trends of the industry,in particular manufacturing plants, are the following: there is a growing need to provide customization of products, ahigh variation of production volumes and a downward trend in the availability of skilled operators due to the ageingof the population. Adapting to this new scenario is a challenge for companies, especially small and medium-sizedenterprises (SMEs) that are suffering first-hand how their specialization is turning against them.The objective of this work is to provide a tool that can serve as a basis to face these challenges in an effective way.Therefore the presented framework, thanks to its modular architecture, allows focusing on the different needs of eachparticular company and offers the possibility of scaling the system for future requirements. The presented platform isdivided into three layers, namely: interface with robot systems, the execution engine and the application developmentlayer.Taking advantage of the provided ecosystem by this framework, different modules have been developed in order toface the mentioned challenges of the industry. On the one hand, to address the need of product customization, theintegration of tools that increase the versatility of the cell are proposed. An example of such tools is skill basedprogramming. By applying this technique a process can be intuitively adapted to the variations or customizations thateach product requires. The use of skills favours the reuse and generalization of developed robot programs.Regarding the variation of the production volumes, a system which permits a greater mobility and a faster reconfigurationis necessary. If in a certain situation a line has a production peak, mechanisms for balancing the loadwith a reasonable cost are required. In this respect, the architecture allows an easy integration of different roboticsystems, actuators, sensors, etc. In addition, thanks to the developed calibration and set-up techniques, the system canbe adapted to new workspaces at an effective time/cost.With respect to the third mentioned topic, an agent-based monitoring system is proposed. This module opens up amultitude of possibilities for the integration of auxiliary modules of protection and security for collaboration andinteraction between people and robots, something that will be necessary in the not so distant future.For demonstrating the advantages and adaptability improvement of the developed framework, a series of real usecases have been presented. In each of them different problematic has been resolved using developed skills,demonstrating how are adapted easily to the different casuistic