Applying MDA and OMG Robotic Specification for Developing Robotic Systems

Robotics systems have special needs often related with their realtime nature and environmental properties. Often, control and communication paths within the system are tightly coupled to the actual physical configuration of the robot. As a consequence, these robots can only be assembled, configured, and programmed by robot experts. Traditional approaches, based on mainly writing the code without using software engineering techniques, are still used in the development process of these systems. Even when these robotic systems are successfully used, several problems can be identified and it is widely accepted that new approaches should be explored. The contribution of this research consists in delineating guidelines for the construction of robotic software systems, taking advantage of the application of the OMG standard robotic specifications which adhere to the model-driven approach MDA. Thereby the expert knowledge is captured in standard abstract models that can then be reused by other less experienced developers. In addition part of the code is automatically generated, reducing costs and improving quality

Autonomous map-learning for a multi-sensor mobile robot using diktiometric representation and negotiation mechanism

Abstract- In this paper we present a method for a multi-sensor mobile robot to explore autonomously an unknown environment. The method tries to solve the main problems involved by such a task. In particular we present a model to represent geographic knowledge, based on an extension of the “Diktiometric representation ” of Engelson and McDermott [1]. We paid special attention to the maintenance of this model, providing mechanism to allow the consistent fusion of sensory observation. Furthermore we argue that, due to the different capabilities of the devices of a multi-sensor system, the only interaction between the sensors should be indirect and based on the individual effect that each sensor has on the system controller. Therefore we present a negotiation mechanism allowing to integrate the world knowledge represented in different models, each of which is updated with the sensory information provided by a specific devices. In our work this integration involves only the exploration strategies of each representation. 1

Frameworks and Pattern Languages: an Intriguing Relationship

ACM COMPUTING SURVE