Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T14:56:34.607Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

An integrated agent-based software architecture for mobile and manipulator systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2007

Patricio Nebot*
Affiliation:
Intelligence Robotics Laboratory, Jaume-I University, E-12071 Castelló, Spain E-mail: pnebot@icc.uji.es, ecervera@icc.uji.es
Enric Cervera
Affiliation:
Intelligence Robotics Laboratory, Jaume-I University, E-12071 Castelló, Spain E-mail: pnebot@icc.uji.es, ecervera@icc.uji.es
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: pnebot@icc.uji.es

Summary

Mobile manipulation involves the most important key issue in robotics: integration. While hardware integration seems to be nearly solved due to the increasing dominance of PC-compatible systems, software integration is still a challenge, since a lot of issues arise with the variety of operating systems, device drivers, application libraries, and programming languages which need to be merged in any real-world robotic system. This paper presents a software architecture, which seamlessly integrates robot arms, mobile bases, vision systems and sensing devices, in a distributed, homogeneous agent framework. Based on the Java platform, the agent-based architecture allows great flexibility in the integration of components, and provides a simple yet extensible and powerful software layer to develop further mobile manipulating environments. Detailed software issues, as well as preliminary results are shown, which pave the way towards the development of network-ready applications involving mobile and manipulating artifacts.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1.Cardenas, A.Goodwine, B., Skaar, S. and Seelinger, M., “Vision-based control of a mobile base and on-board arm,” Int. J. Robot. Res. 22 (7), 677698 (2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2.Bayle, B.Fourquet, J.Y. and Renaud, M., “Manipulability of wheeled mobile manipulators: application to motion generation,” Int. J. Robot. Res. 22 (7), 565581 (2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3.Waarsing, B. J. W., Nuttin, M. and Van Brussel, H., “Behaviour-Based Mobile Manipulation: The Opening of a Door,” Proceedings of ASER’03 (2003) pp. 168175.Google Scholar
4.Perkins, C., RTP: Audio and Video for the Internet (Addison-Wesley, Boston, MA, 2003).Google Scholar
5.Kragic, D.Petersson, L. and Christensen, H. I., “Visually guided manipulation tasks,” Robot. Autonom. Syst. 40 (2–3), 193203 (2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6.Bellifemine, F.Caire, G., Poggi, A. and Rimassa, G.. “JADE a white paper,” EXP in search of innovation (special issue on JADE) 3 (3), 619 (2003).Google Scholar
7.Lidoris, G. and Buss, M., “A Multi-Agent System Architecture for Modular Robotic Mobility Aids,” Proceedings of the European Robotics Symposium (2006) 22, pp. 1526.Google Scholar
8.Konolige, K., “The SRI small vision system,” http://www.ai.sri.com/~konolige/svs/Google Scholar
9.Petersson, L., Egerstedt, M. and Christensen, H. I., “A Hybrid Control Architecture for Mobile Manipulation,” Proceedings of the IROS’99 (1999) pp. 12851291.Google Scholar
10.Erden, M. S., Leblebicioglu, K. and Halici, U., “Multi-agent system-based fuzzy controller design with genetic tuning for a mobile manipulator robot in the hand over task,” J. Intell. Robot. Syst. 39 (3), 287306 (2004).Google Scholar
11.Seelinger, M., Yoder, J. D., Baumgartner, E.T. and Skaar, S.B., “High-precision visual control of mobile manipulators,” IEEE Trans. Robot. Autom. 18 (6), 957965 (2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12.Khatib, O., “Mobile manipulation: the robotic assistant,” Robot. Autonom. Syst. 26 (2–3), 175183 (1999).Google Scholar
13.Nebot, P. and Cervera, E., “Agent-based Application Framework for Multiple Mobile Robots Cooperation,” Proceedings of the ICRA (2005) pp. 15091514.Google Scholar
14.Hough, P. V. C., “Methods and means for recognizing complex patterns,” U.S. Patent 3, 069, 654 (1962).Google Scholar
15.Gordon, R. and Talley, S., Essential JMF: Java Media Framework (Prentice Hall, Boston, MA, 1998).Google Scholar
16.Liang, S., Java(TM) Native Interface: Programmer's Guide and Specification (Addison-Wesley, Boston, MA, 1999).Google Scholar
17.Lin, S. and Goldenberg, A. A., “Neural-network control of mobile manipulators,” IEEE Trans. Neural Netw. 12 (5), 11211133 (2001).Google ScholarPubMed
18.Smith, S. M. and Brady, J. M.. “SUSAN—a new approach to low level image processing,” Int. J. Comput. Vis. 23 (1), 4578 (1997).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19.Andronache, V. and Scheutz, M., “Ade – an architecture development environment for virtual and robotic agents,” Int. J. Artif. Intell. Tools 15 (2), 251286 (2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar