UML-based service robot software development: A case study

Abstract

The research field of Intelligent Service Robots, which has become more and more popular over the last years, covers a wide range of applications from climbing machines for cleaning large storefronts to robotic assistance for disabled or elderly people. When developing service robot software, it is a challenging problem to design the robot architecture by carefully considering user needs and requirements, implement robot application components based on the architecture, and integrate these components in a systematic and comprehensive way for maintainability and reusability. Furthermore, it becomes more difficult to communicate among development teams and with others when many engineers from different teams participate in developing the service robot. To solve these problems, we applied the COMET design method, which uses the industry-standard UML notation, to developing the software of an intelligent service robot for the elderly, called T-Rot, under development at Center for Intelligent Robotics (CIR). In this paper, we discuss our experiences with the project in which we successfully addressed these problems and developed the autonomous navigation system of the robot with the COMET/UML method. Copyright 2006 ACM.