Axon: A middleware for robotic platforms in an experimental environment

Abstract

Major strides have been achieved recently in developing frameworks for multi-robot systems. The need to integrate different heterogeneous robotic systems has led to the emergence of robotic middleware design. The aim of the work presented in this paper is to develop an easy-to-use middleware that is able to effectively handle multiple robots and clients within an experimental environment. Unlike previous work in robotic middleware which models a robot as a network of components and provide low-level control, our proposed approach provides a highlevel representation of robots. We also introduce the notion of efficient structured data exchange as an important aspect in robotic middleware research. We designed and developed our middleware using recent technologies. Moreover, two different robotic platforms, the PeopleBot mobile robot and the Cyton Alpha robotic arm, were used to test and evaluate the middlewares ability to integrate different types of robots. A seriesof performance measurement experiments were carried out to gauge the middlewares ability to handle multiple robots.