Towards a context identification method for autonomous robots

Abstract

The ability to precisely and accurately detect and evaluate environmental conditions with the help of sensors has strongly driven the development of autonomous robots in recent decades. This so-called context awareness and the identification of the context information relevant for a robot is already widespread in the areas of mobile computing and industrial applications and represents one of the most important enablers for autonomous behavior. Nevertheless, context identification still plays a minor role in the technical design phase due to higher development effort or lack of tools to deal with the inherent complexity. To promote context identification in an early design phase, this paper presents a method to analyze autonomous robots and identify context information that is relevant for realizing the desired behavior. The approach enables the integration of context awareness into autonomous robots and can be used in combination with all current design methods. The applicability of the method is demonstrated using a case study of an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle.