ROBOTIC ARCHITECTURE BASED ON ELECTRONIC

BUSINESS MODELS

From Physics Components to Smart Services

José Vicente Berná-Martínez, Francisco Maciá-Pérez, Virgilio Gilart-Iglesias,

Diego Marcos-Jorequera

Computer Science Department, University of Alicante, San Vicente del Raspeig, Spain

Keywords: Robotic, Smart Services, SOA, e-Business, Distributed system, Middleware.

Abstract: This paper presents an approach for designing robots and robotic systems based on the application of

models, architectures, techniques and tools that have contributed valid solutions in other areas, such as e-

business. Before applying these solutions, the physical elements that make up a robotic system are subjected

to a normalization process in order to characterize their functional contributions. In this way, the conceptual

model and the technical architecture of the service-oriented architecture robotic system is established.

1 INTRODUCTION

Robotics is a continually growing area, and is

subject to great barriers that condition its growth and

functionality. Such obstacles include the lack of

unicity and standards, even in the most elementary

components; the complexity in its design,

development and implementation due to the great

number of implied disciplines; and the great

dependency of the underlying technology that makes

up and sustains the physical layer.

These types of problems, in which a multitude of

actors, disciplines and technologies conjugate

themselves, is very common in the development of

applications distributed on the Internet and for which

information and communication technologies (ICT)

have already provided successful solutions. This

new scene has forced the business applications to

qualify mechanisms that allow their distributed

development, reusability, integration of modules and

components, and methods of interaction between

organizations. Thus, models, architectures, design

patterns and tools that are providing scalable,

flexible, integrated and valid solutions, have been

developed in the long term. In this way, the ICT, as

a whole, have been instituted as the technological

bases on which the present industrial and productive

weave is sustained.

Due to the fact that the operative and functional

requirements in the area of robotics coincide with

those that have been resolved in the area of internet-

distributed applications, we propose applying these

same solutions (n-tier architectures, distributed

software components, B2B, B2C or M2M models

and SOA architectures) to reach a scalable, flexible

and realistic model of robots and multi-robot

systems that allows us to contemplate each element

that makes up a service, independently of its nature,

ubication or any other type of physical restriction.

This paper considers which are the most suitable

technologies used in other fields, particularly in

business, and it also studies their application in robot

modelling. The existing business-robot parallelism is

analyzed as well as the logic of electronic business-

components and the distributed software component

concept is found to be the convergence point.

Therefore, the first aspect to be approached is the

process that we term normalization of components

which allows us to characterize the

electromechanical elements of the robotic system as

software components. In this way, all the

components of the robot are aligned, both physically

and conceptually, for services and, finally, an n-tier

based architecture is proposed to integrate them all

within the same conceptual model.

544

Berná-Martínez J., Maciá-Pérez F., Gilart-Iglesias V. and Marcos-Jorequera D. (2006).

ROBOTIC ARCHITECTURE BASED ON ELECTRONIC BUSINESS MODELS - From Physics Components to Smart Services.

In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics, pages 544-547

DOI: 10.5220/0001217305440547

 SciTePress

2 BACKGROUND

In recent years, robotics has experienced a great

advance in the many fields involved (Torres et al,

2002). Nevertheless, these advances have not

affected all the tasks that a robot may carry out to

the same extent. This may be explained by the fact

that the models and architectures used were not the

most suitable in order to obtain more far-reaching

objectives (Minsky, 2000). Aspects such as

cognition or commonsense arise from the interaction

of individuals, with their context or with other

individuals. Therefore, models and distributed

architectures that can support these multitudinal

ecosystems are required (Oatley, 2000). There are a

great number of projects that deal with collaborative

systems by which it is possible to conceive the

appropriate mechanisms and functionality of

independent techniques so that several robots can

establish relationships with each other and

efficiently obtain the fulfillment of a task (Grob et

al, 2006). These studies explore the robustness,

flexibility and ability to solve complex problems, by

using the parallelism and self-organization of robotic

communities composed of independent and even

heterogenous individuals (Mondada et al, 2004).

Many of these studies propose a technological

framework that may serve as a standard platform in

the area of robotics (Spears et al, 2004) and which

allows the implementation of the system to be

separated from the physical layer (Perez, 2000).

The use of alternative communication

mechanisms to replace traditional systems and the

study of possible relationships and their

formalisation are beginning to be used for this

purpose (Sekmen, 2004). For many years, fields that

are closely linked to robotics, such as sensoring or

monitoring, have focused on the use and application

of internet-related technologies for the development

of intelligent or embedded networks (Tao Et al,

2004), since these technologies are low cost, highly

sophisticated, far-reaching and socially acceptable.

Furthermore, they are now the main tools for

enabling distributed infrastructures to be established

and to overcome barriers related to physical

technologies (Delin et al, 2005).

The miniaturization capacity allows us to

incorporate computation in practically any

component (Gilart et al, 2006). The concept of

pervasive computing along with communications

technologies can be applied to all areas, for example,

using encrusted devices to provide internet-based

interfaces as a device management mechanism (Ju et

al, 2000). Some of the latest studies propose

intelligent environments combining the use of

embedded sensors and ontology-based contexts (Tan

et al, 2005). The success of embedded computation

is evident due to the transparent incorporation of

ITC into daily life (Hansmann Et al the 2003).

3 NORMALIZATION OF

COMPONENTS

The aim of the normalization process is to

characterize the elementary components of a robotic

system (including sensors, actuators and

computational elements) from the point of view of

its contribution to the robot’s functional and

conceptual model. In this way, a vision is generated

that firstly allows physical elements and, later,

robotic processes to evolve towards ITC services.

The process involves equipping each of the robot’s

elementary components with the required hardware

infrastructure and software so that they can be

displayed as software services. The new resulting

components of this process are named Smart

Services and allow us to raise the abstraction level of

the lowest layers, until they can be compared with

the rest of the robotic system’s software services.

More specifically, we will firstly act on the

sensors and actuators. In general, these elements do

not have the capacity to process and store the

information with which to operate. The first stage

involves equipping these elements with the

necessary hardware so that they can do so. Figure 1

shows a block diagram with the main components.

This hardware consists of: an analogical-digital

converter that allows the analogical signals of the

actuators or sensors to be adapted to those of the

digital processor; a processor, equipped with

computation capacity; memory to store or handle the

Figure 1: Physical block diagram of the Smart Service.

ROBOTIC ARCHITECTURE BASED ON ELECTRONIC BUSINESS MODELS - From Physics Components to Smart

Services

545

data obtained or processed; a communications

system that adapts the information to the

communication channel; and an energy regulation

module that adapts input at the correct levels. The

latter two modules could be integrated since existing

communication protocols can unify these functions

(PoE or PLC).

Once we have the necessary hardware, we can

incorporate the software elements into the devices as

embedded software, which will allow interaction

with it as a service. In figure 2, the embedded

software platform that is set out.

This platform consists of: a communications

layer with the standard network protocols (TCP/IP,

HTTP, SMT, FTP...); a second layer where SOAP

and its extensions are located; a third layer with the

service description languages, WSDL; and a fourth

layer where the discovery services and publication

services (UDDI) will be located. The three upper

layers of the platform use technology bases such as

XML, DTD and schemas. The whole platform is

covered by the standard network security protocols.

In this way, the services offered by each component

will be found in the upper levels.

These new devices, with their capacities, are

what we known as Smart Sensors or Smart

Actuators.

In addition to sensors and actuators, we require

the rest of the computational components that make

up the robotic system to be aligned technologically

and functionally with these new intelligent devices.

In this case, the required computational hardware

platform is already available. For this reason, it will

be sufficient to add the necessary architectonic

software layers so that planners, gateways, trajectory

calculation processes, controllers and other

functionalities of the robot can also be offered as

services. This type of services that originate from

software processes are known as Smart

Computations.

Finally, we have been able to encapsulate and

hide the different physical elements involved in the

system and, since they are all now shown as

services, we have grouped them under the common

name of Smart Services, independently of their

physical nature.

Given that now there is nothing to prevent a

Smart Service from being made up of other Smart

Services, we can distinguish between Basic Smart

Services, such as those which cannot be divided into

other Smart Services, and the Compound Smart

Services, which use at least one other Smart Service,

which in turn may be either basic or compound.

4 CONCEPTUAL TECHNICAL

ARCHITECTURE

Once all the elements have been standardized and

reduced to distributed software components (Smart

Services), we can apply the solutions extracted from

the e-business models or, more generically, from the

distributed software component-based systems.

In the case of the technical architecture of the

robot, an n-level architecture can be applied where a

homogenous and structured panorama is formed in

layers. A communications level is determined to

support the Smart Service hardware, which is

formed by the whole physical layer which makes up

each of the components. The Middleware layer is

comprised of the software that allows us to manage

the described communications and processing

mechanisms. It will be composed of the transmission

protocols, messages language, component access

protocols, discovery protocols, etc. This level is

responsible for abstracting the traditional

components towards the world of the services. As

regards the technical physical architecture, each

intelligent hardware component, together with its

Figure 2: Logical diagram of the component.

Figure 3: Conceptual technical architecture to

distributed robotic system based on Smart Services.

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service layer, constitutes a container upon which are

executed the distributed software components that

implement their business logic or, in terms of the

robotic system, the functionality of their

components. The service layer is the platform for

developing the software components that provide the

functionality and interface that the Smart Service is

able to offer to other components, whether they

belong to the same robot or to any other client with

the sufficient capacity and permission to call it.

The resulting architecture is known as Service-

Oriented Robotic Architecture and incorporates

characteristics such as the organization of the

elements involved into perfectly defined

compartments and interfaces.

5 CONCLUSIONS

In this paper we propose a conceptualization that

breaks down the architecture of the underlying

technology and frees the traditional organisational

schemas of their limitations; it allows us to

disconnect the disciplines involved in the

development of projects by elevating the

functionality of the minimum components, thanks to

the appearance of middleware; and it homogenizes

the technologies that will be used when separating

and organizing the different functional aspects in

layers and levels with well-defined interfaces.

The benefits not only affect the architectonic

aspects, but they also allow us to take advantage of

the conceptual and organisational characteristics of

the service paradigm, ensuring a simpler integration

based on standards, scalability, regardless of the

platform and manufacturer, and using realistic

development tools. The technological gap that

separates implementation models is reduced as since

the minimum elements of the robotic systems are

technologically more advanced.

Finally, the proposed approach opens the door to

acquiring new capabilities such as self-repair, self-

assembly or service replication, since the

technologies that sustain the service paradigm can

support or implement mechanisms related to these

proposals.

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