Robot development process
In computer science the process of developing large software systems is well understood. A search performed in March 2009 in Google Scholar for the phrase "software development process" resulted in approx. 49,000 hits. Some of the links point to textbooks, which have several thousand citations.
At the same time a search for "robot development process" returned only 26 hits. This number indicates that robot development is by far not as well defined and established as a structured formal process.
Earlier attempts to support the robot development process have focused on the development and provision of
- functional libraries,
- control architectures,
- software integration frameworks, and
- communication infrastructure and middleware.
Other important aspects, however, have not received enough attention. These aspects include:
- formal models for the various software and hardware components,
- reuse of designs, libraries, and architectural elements between different robot applications,
- tools and tool chains which support the generation, aggregation, and validation of models and their transformation and compilation into operational components and systems, and the deployment of the latter in the real world allowing also for reconfiguration during runtime, and
- cross-sectional aspects, such as robustness, openness, harmonised interfaces which enable benchmarking, instrumentation for monitoring and error management and thereby boost the commercialisation of robotics products and services.