A Capability-based Framework for Programming Small Domestic Service Robots

Abstract

Currently, small domestic service robots are on the verge of becoming a mass product for assisting end customers with everyday tasks. Despite open programming interfaces provided by robot manufacturers, many different robot systems exist that have to be programmed individually due to technical differences. The Robot Operating System (ROS) helps alleviate this problem, but provides only a low abstraction level, which hinders easy application development for entire classes of robots. This paper presents a high-level abstraction API for uniform programming and control of small domestic service-robots that support moving to various locations, grabbing items and basic two-way communication. The programming framework employs robot capabilities as abstractions and thereby facilitates intuitive use and extensibility. It builds on ROS functionality but hides underlying complexity from developers. We demonstrate the applicability of the approach by various robot applications in the smart-home domain that we developed on basis of the API.