UPnP Robot Middleware and its Application to Robots

Abstract—The UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) is a middleware that has many advantages for future robot in dynamic distributed computing environment such as loosely coupled programming architecture, late binding and automatic discovery of services. Recently we have developed a UPnP based robot middleware SDK for easy integration of robot S/W components. In this paper, we explain the functions of the UPnP based robot middleware SDK. We also present some experimental results of its application to real robots. Lastly we discuss the reason why the UPnP robot middleware is useful and effective in robot software integration.

I. INTRODUCTION

Nowadays robots are expanding their application area from industry to entertainments and services at home. NeCoRo of Omron[1] is an animal-shaped robot that has capability of giving fun and comfort to people by interacting and communicating with people. The Roomba of iRobot[2] is a robot that works as an automatic vacuum cleaner. It is reported that iRobot has been shipped more than 2 million Roombas[3]. Though the numbers of function of current commercial robots are limited, they are expected to be increased. As robot technologies are advanced, robots are getting more and more complex.

Robots with high functionalities require a lot of software components. Building large systems such as the robots using reusable software from various sources is not a straightforward task. It needs systematic development and integration methodology rather than monolithic development. Middleware helps the systematic integration, and increases the interoperability, portability, and flexibility of applications.

Recently the CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture)[4] has been used as a middleware in several projects. Among them are the HRP(Humanoid Robotics Project)[5], the OROCOS(Open Robot Control Systems) project[6], and the Miro(Middleware for mobile robots) project[7]. They are all based on the CORBA technology.

In the previous paper[8], we proposed to use the UPnP (Universal Plug and Play)[9] as a robot middleware, and examined its possibility. The UPnP defines architecture for pervasive peer-to-peer network connectivity of intelligent appliances. It has many advantages over the CORBA such as small memory footprint. But, more important feature is that it is designed for operation in dynamic distributed computing environment. Here the dynamic environment means that computing devices can join and leave the network dynamically. It means that the components of a robot can be ‘plugged and played’ without any burden of configuration efforts with the UPnP.

Sang Chul Ahn, Jung-Woo Lee, Ki-Woong Lim, Heedong Ko, Yong-Moo Kwon and Hyoung-Gon Kim

Imaging Media Research Center, Korea Institute of Science and Technology 39-1 Hawolgok-dong, Sungbuk-gu, 136-791 Seoul, Korea {asc, ricow, lkw, ko, ymk, hgk}@imrc.kist.re.kr

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