Distributing a robotic system on a network: the ETHNOS approach

Abstract

Cognitive activity in intelligent robotic systems has often been modeled as a set of communicating intelligent distributed agents or modules. Some examples in this field are blackboard architectures, hybrid models or subsumption architectures. The rapid progress of communication technology offers the possibility of distributing computation not only on different processes but on a network of computers. This both results in greater available computational power and it allows the robot to merge with the environment it operates in. In suitable intelligent buildings a mobile robot may open doors, turn on/off lights or even avoid obstacles based not only on its sensors and actuators but on the interaction with other robotic entities. In addition the range of robot interactions is now only limited by the network and thus the robot can operate remotely on the environment. Similarly, users can issue commands to remote robots and receive feedback in real-time. In this paper we propose a global approach to distributing a robotic system over a computer network. The approach is named ETHNOS (Expert Tribe in a Hybrid Network Operating System) because it is based on a novel operating system we developed specifically for distributed intelligent robotics. The paper focuses on its characteristics that make it well suited for network robotics applications. It also illustrates an example of a real application in the field of mobile robotics.