Reusable software components for robots using fuzzy abstractions

Mobile robots today, while varying greatly in design, of-ten have a large number of similarities in terms of their tasks and goals. Navigation, obstacle avoidance, and vision are all examples. In turn, robots of similar design, but with varying configurations, should be able to share the bulk of their controlling software. Any changes required should be minimal and ideally only to specify new hardware config-urations. However, it is difficult to achieve such flexibil-ity, mainly due to the enormous variety of robot hardware available and the huge number of possible configurations. Monolithic controllers that can handle such variety are im-possible to build. This paper will investigate these portability problems, as well as techniques to manage common abstractions for user-designed components. The challenge is in creating new methods for robot software to support a diverse va-riety of robots, while also being easily upgraded and ex-tended. These methods can then provide new ways to sup-port the operational and functional reuse of the same high-level components across a variety of robots. 1