Building a software architecture for a human-robot team using the orca framework

This paper considers the problem of building a software architecture for a human-robot team. The objective of the team is to build a multi-attribute map of the world by performing information fusion. A decentralized approach to information fusion is adopted to achieve the system properties of scalab...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
Main Authors: Kaupp, Tobias, Brooks, Alex, Upcroft, Ben, Makarenko, Alexei
Format: Conference Object
Language:English
Published: 2007
Subjects:
Online Access:https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-fhws/frontdoor/index/index/docId/3242
https://doi.org/10.1109/ROBOT.2007.364051
Description
Summary:This paper considers the problem of building a software architecture for a human-robot team. The objective of the team is to build a multi-attribute map of the world by performing information fusion. A decentralized approach to information fusion is adopted to achieve the system properties of scalability and survivability. Decentralization imposes constraints on the design of the architecture and its implementation. We show how a component-based software engineering approach can address these constraints. The architecture is implemented using Orca - a component-based software framework for robotic systems. Experimental results from a deployed system comprised of an unmanned air vehicle, a ground vehicle, and two human operators are presented. A section on the lessons learned is included which may be applicable to other distributed systems with complex algorithms. We also compare Orca to the player software framework in the context of distributed systems.