Miro - middleware for mobile robot applications

TLDR

Developing mobile robot software is tedious, error‑prone, and hampered by heterogeneous hardware, operating systems, communication protocols, and programming languages, while vendor environments lag behind and enterprise integration remains largely unresolved. We propose an object‑oriented middleware to simplify development, enhance portability, and improve maintainability of mobile robot applications. Miro offers generic abstract services such as localization and behavior engines that can be applied across robot platforms with minimal modification. Miro satisfies these goals, has been ported to three mobile platforms with little effort, and demonstrates ease of use, portability, and maintainability.

Abstract

Developing software for mobile robot applications is a tedious and error-prone task. Modern mobile robot systems are distributed systems, and their designs exhibit large heterogeneity in terms of hardware, operating systems, communications protocols, and programming languages. Vendor-provided programming environments have not kept pace with recent developments in software technology. Also, standardized modules for certain robot functionalities are beginning to emerge. Furthermore, the seamless integration of mobile robot applications into enterprise information processing systems is mostly an open problem. We suggest the construction and use of object-oriented robot middleware to make the development of mobile robot applications easier and faster, and to foster portability and maintainability of robot software. With Miro, we present such a middleware, which meets the aforementioned requirements and has been ported to three different mobile platforms with little effort. Miro also provides generic abstract services like localization or behavior engines, which can be applied on different robot platforms with virtually no modifications.