Variability Analysis for Robot Operating System Applications

Abstract

Robotic applications are often designed to be reusable and configurable. Sometimes, due to the different supported software and hardware components, as well as the different implemented robot capabilities, the total number of possible configurations for a single system can be extremely large. In these scenarios, understanding how different configurations coexist and which components and capabilities are compatible with each other is a significant time sink both for developers and end users alike. In this paper, we present a static analysis tool, specifically designed for robotic software developed for the Robot Operating System (ROS), that is capable of presenting a graphical and interactive overview of the system’s runtime variability, with the goal of simplifying the deployment of the desired robot configuration.