A user-friendly interface to control ROS robotic platforms

Abstract

In this work we present a user interface assisting non-expert users to design complex robot behaviours, hence facilitating the deployment of robot-integrated applications. Due to the increasing number of robotic platforms available for commercial use, robots are being approached by users with different backgrounds, whose interests lie in the high-level capabilities of the platforms rather than their technical architecture. Our interface allows non-experts to use a robot as a development platform, i.e. giving it high-level commands (e.g. autonomous navigation, vision, natural language generation) by relying on a basic ontology of high-level capabilities mapped on the robot low-level capabilities (e.g. communication, synchronisation, drivers) exposed by the most common robotic middleware ROS. To show how our work can sensibly reduce the efforts required for having robots achieving basic tasks, we propose a live demonstration in which the ISWC audience will remotely program a robot to achieve different tasks without any previous knowledge of ROS.