Software Platform for Symbiotic Operations of Human and Networked Robots

Abstract

Symbiotic information system is a concept aiming for a user-friendly information system by establishing a symbiosis relationship of human and the information systems. Applying this concept to human operators and networked robots, this paper describes an on -going design and implementation processes of a software platform to support collaborative operations of human operators and networked robots. The software platform is based on the concept of autonomous agents providing abstractions of sophisticated robot hardware interfaces and extensibility. The implemented system allows multiple users to collaboratively operate on a robot, or a group of robots at the same time. Mobile agents are employed to coordinate the accesses to the shared robots through vote-casting, or shared control brokering mechanism.