Generalizing robot application development: operating system and framework abstractions

As general-purpose robots begin to find their way into the household and workplace, there will be a demand for software to run on these robots. We foresee the proliferation of robot apps that use a common set of abstractions to allow them to function on a variety of hardware platforms. In this paper, we introduce a robot operating system to support these apps and we detail the framework abstractions that it provides. We present many lessons learned from developing and debugging a number of such apps, and discuss a novel user-interface concept wherein we abstract the interaction model to allow apps to interact with users via a remote or voice interface in order to accomplish their goals. We present our audit logging infrastructure and the utility it provides to both application developers and users. We show that our framework allows a robot to effectively deal with challenges, such as user authentication and interaction. We demonstrate a simple bartender app to fetch drink orders for students, and it is successfully able to deliver them in 9/10 trials in real-world conditions.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2012

Author dc:creator

• Kravchenko, Aleksandar

Contributors dc:contributor

• King, Samuel T.

• robots
• application framework
• operating system (OS)
• user interface (UI)
• audit logging
• app store

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2012 Aleksandar Kravchenko

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/34462

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/34462