Middleware Design for Swarm-Driving Robots Accompanying Humans.
Middleware Design for Swarm-Driving Robots Accompanying Humans.
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DOI：
10.3390/s17020392
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发表时间：
2017-02-17
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Kang SJ
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Kim MS;Kim SH;Kang SJ
关于陪伴人类的机器人的研究正在不断进行。Pet-Bot通过机器人和人之间的真实的交互提供行走辅助和物体搬运服务，而无需任何特定的控制。然而，对于Pet-Bot，用户可以使用的机器人数量有限。如果能克服这一限制，Pet-Bot可以在更多领域提供服务。因此，在这项研究中，我们提出了一个群体驱动的中间件设计，采用了一个群体的概念，它提供了有效的并行运动，让多个人类陪同机器人来完成一个共同的目的。中间件的功能分为三个部分：群进程的序列管理器、消息管理器和相对位置标识管理器。该中间件通过使用IEEE 802.15.4 MAC协议的射频（RF）通信的消息交换来处理群中的机器人的群处理序列，并且管理利用红外（IR）信号强度识别相对位置的IR通信模块。本研究中的群体由与用户交互的主节点和与用户没有交互的从节点组成。这种组合旨在控制与用户活动同步的整体群，这是难以预测的。我们使用IR通信的相对位置估计的准确性进行评估，在用户活动的变化的奴隶的响应时间，以及根据奴隶的数量来组织网络的时间。
Research on robots that accompany humans is being continuously studied. The Pet-Bot provides walking-assistance and object-carrying services without any specific controls through interaction between the robot and the human in real time. However, with Pet-Bot, there is a limit to the number of robots a user can use. If this limit is overcome, the Pet-Bot can provide services in more areas. Therefore, in this study, we propose a swarm-driving middleware design adopting the concept of a swarm, which provides effective parallel movement to allow multiple human-accompanying robots to accomplish a common purpose. The functions of middleware divide into three parts: a sequence manager for swarm process, a messaging manager, and a relative-location identification manager. This middleware processes the sequence of swarm-process of robots in the swarm through message exchanging using radio frequency (RF) communication of an IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol and manages an infrared (IR) communication module identifying relative location with IR signal strength. The swarm in this study is composed of the master interacting with the user and the slaves having no interaction with the user. This composition is intended to control the overall swarm in synchronization with the user activity, which is difficult to predict. We evaluate the accuracy of the relative-location estimation using IR communication, the response time of the slaves to a change in user activity, and the time to organize a network according to the number of slaves.