Comparison study of robotic middleware for robotic applications

Abstract

Developing a robot system is a hard task and it requires a special programming knowledge. Moreover, the development and the operation of every robot system needs common tasks such as state management, communication among parts, synchronization, etc. Several software platforms were introduced for supporting these, hence the researcher and developer can concentrate the novel ideas. This document gives an overview of various robotic middleware. Strictly defined, robotic middleware serves for realizing the communication between various software components. In a wider sense, they are helping the process of development of robotic applications. The document contains descriptions of systems such as Robot Operating System (ROS), RT-Middleware, OPRoS and Orocos. The report also contains a comparison of the above-listed.