Roboid Studio: A design framework for thin-client network robots

Abstract

The Roboid Studio is an all-in-one framework based on the Eclipse to develop robotics applications for thin-client network robots. The framework includes support programs, graphical interfaces, code libraries, a modeling language, a script language, execution semantics and a communication protocol. The Roboid Studio enables developers and even the people unskilled in the robotics to create software modules and a wide-variety of robot contents very easily. We first construct a robot model which defines the configuration of hardware and software devices and describes their functions and control methods. Unlike the existing model-based methods, the robot model in our approach is utilized not only to generate the APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for access to software modules but also to create robot contents and communication packets. The Device Map Protocol (DMP) we propose in this framework is insensitive to transmission delay and packet loss, and ensures the robot can operate with all its parts and play multimedia data in sync.