Ubiquitous network robot platform for realizing integrated robotic applications

Abstract

This paper introduces a common infrastructure for robotic applications to support our daily life: the Ubiquitous Network Robot Platform (UNR-PF). UNR-PF bridges the gaps among service application providers, customers and robotic devices such as robots, sensors and smartphones. For application programmers, UNR-PF provides a common API so that programmers can realize applications in a way independent to the actual variation in devices. UNR-PF also provides applications to span across multiple areas so that customers can receive seamless support in different scenes based on their abilities. Here, we first describe the motivation as well as requirements for UNR-PF based on past field studies. Based on these requirements, several real-world case studies has been performed which showed the effectiveness of the proposed concept of UNR-PF for continuously supporting our daily activities across multiple areas. We describe recent activities toward standardizing the key elements of UNR-PF and discuss future works. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.