A NUPlatform for software on articulated mobile robots.

The development of software for robot systems is an involved process, that frequently results in a robot specific system. However, through careful design, frameworks that can be used on multiple operating systems and robot platforms can be created. This paper proposes such a framework. The framework makes use of a blackboard and a class hierarchy to enable high–level software modules to be robot and operating system independent. The blackboard is used to standardise the transfer of information and allow for the high–level modules to adapt to changes in the robot hardware in real–time. The class hierarchy encapsulates the platform dependent aspects and provides a means of implementation sharing between different platforms. Furthermore, the hierarchy for the behaviour and motion modules simplify the addition of robot specific sections, and allow them to coexist. The NUPlatform framework has been applied to six different platforms, including four physical robots and a simulator, and runs under several different operating system. The framework has also been successfully used in several research projects to implement vastly different robot behaviours