Abstract
The development of robotic systems has always been a severe challenge due to the complex technological issues involved. In this scenario, software plays a key role as it is the medium to embody intelligence in the machine. This Special Issue publishes papers that present the challenges and demonstrate the effectiveness of software development and integration techniques in building robotic systems. The papers presented in this Special Issue offer a fairly complete view of the key aspects of the software development process in Robotics. They can be divided into three groups.
The first group is general and describes issues, challenges and domain models. It includes three papers. “Software Systems for Robotics. An Applied Research Perspective” by Greg Broten et al. describes DRDC's (you need to spell out what DRDC stands for – Defense Research Departmnet Canada – I think) adoption of a methodology and tool chain for managing complex software development. “Stability-Oriented Software Development in Robotics” by Davide Brugali et al. investigates the concept of software stability applied to robot systems. “CLARAty: Challenges and Steps Toward Reusable Robotic Software” by Issa A. Nesnas et al. presents in detail some of the challenges in developing reusable robotic software and integrating it on NASA's heterogeneous robotic platforms.
The second group of papers focuses on techniques to build reusable software components for robotic applications. It includes five papers. “Design Minimalism in Robotics Programming” by Anthony Cowley et al. shows how very simple modules, with well-designed interfaces can be connected through a strongly typed framework to execute different robotics tasks. “Design and implementation of modular software for programming mobile robots” by Alessandro Farinelli et al. describes a software development toolkit for programming mobile robots, that has been used on different platforms and for different robotic application. “YARP: Yet Another Robot Platform” by Giorgio Metta et al. presents the results of an open-source project that encapsulates lessons from building humanoid robots. “Communication Patterns as Key Towards Component-Based Robotics” by Christian Schlegel introduces a small set of communication patterns as basis for all robotic intercomponent interactions. “Robotic Software Integration Using MARIE”, Carle Côté et al. presents a framework for developing and integrating new and existing software for robotic systems.
The last group presents software solutions to specific robotic problems. It includes five papers. “Towards a Unified Representation of Mechanisms for Robotic Control Software” by Antonio Diaz-Calderon et al. gives an overview of the Mechanism Model paradigm, a framework to model mechanisms for robotic control. “VIP – A Framework-Based Approach to Robot Vision” by Hans Utz et al. introduces the video image processing (VIP) framework: a software framework for multithreaded control flow modeling in robot vision. “CoRoBa, a multi mobile robot control and simulation framework” by Eric Colon et al. presents a multi-robot control framework that uses CORBA as its communication middleware. “Localisation and World Modelling: an Architectural Perspective” by Daniela Micucci et al. introduces rationale, design, and implementation of a system for real-time localization and world-modeling. “Lessons Learned in Integration for Sensor-Based Robot Navigation Systems” by Luis Montesano et al. discusses the lessons learned while designing, testing and validating techniques that implement a robot's navigation system.
We want to express our thanks and appreciation to Editors in Chief for their effort in making this Special Issue possible. Special thanks go to the many anonymous reviewers who provided valuable and constructive comments. We would also like to thank the Mars Technology Program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for sponsoring this special issue.