BERRA: a research architecture for service robots

Abstract

The architecture for a mobile service robot is discussed. The paper covers aspects related to overall design and implementation. The robot architecture is of the hybrid deliberative/reactive behavioral type. The strategy is selection where planning is viewed as configuration. The architecture can be divided into three layers, one for deliberation, one for task execution, and one reactive layer. Scalability and a high degree of flexibility have been primary design goals, making it easy to reconfigure the system. The system has been built in an object oriented fashion. An application of the architecture has been tested in a significant number of missions in our lab, where one room has been setup as an ordinary living room.