Abstract
In this paper we address the issue of designing and implementing an intercommunication software that allows to integrate the different modules of a robotic software application. The developed software, called NEXUS, it is based on a subscription/production design, and also makes use of some important features from high-level programming languages, such as modular and object-oriented techniques. This leads to a desirable decoupling between the programs designed for a given task and the software facilities required for inter-process communications, error recovery system, user interfaces, etc. Also an additional benefit is that it makes the software less sensitive to changes than monolithic applications. Some important features of NEXUS are itsdistributed nature, its hierarchical error recovery system, and thereal-time capabilities that it inherits from the underlying operating system. NEXUS has been developed for mobile robots, but its design has been done generic enough for implementing any distributed robotic system, such as cooperating robots, teleoperation systems, manufacturing cells, etc. We outline some implementation issues and how a set of modules designed for our mobile robot RAM-2 have been integrated showing both the flexibility and the reduction of costs achievable by using NEXUS.
This work has been supported by the Spanish Government under the research project CICYT- TAP96-0763.
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Fernandez, J.A., Gonzalez, J., Martin, A. (1998). Communicating and Integrating the Modules of a Robotic Software Application. In: Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems 3. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-72198-4_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-72198-4_6
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