Issues and Implementation of a URC Home Service Robot

Abstract

This paper reviews and discusses many issues and implementation details of an intelligent home service robot in a URC (Ubiquitous Robotic Companion) environment. In contrast to standalone service robots, URC service robots provide a variety of functions by the full utilization of network infrastructure. Many challenges are waiting to be faced in front of us—for example, the execution and coordination of services, multiple team support, session and service management, and communication protocol and its architecture, and resource management of a robot. This paper proposes solutions for the above issues and applies the solutions to a network-based home service robot called Nettoro. As an application of the proposed architecture, a pilot project launched December, 2006 is presented and the results are briefly discussed.