Daily Note: Flexible and Reconfigurable Robotics

These notes are a summary of concepts presented in “Reconfigurable physical agents.”

Masahiro Fujita, Hiroaki Kitano, and Koji Kageyama. 1998. Reconfigurable physical agents. In Proceedings of the second international conference on Autonomous agents (AGENTS ’98). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 54–61. https://doi.org/10.1145/280765.280774

  1. Hot Plug-In Capability
    • Precise definition of mechanical, electrical, and software protocols
    • Enables seamless addition or replacement of robot components
  2. Reconfiguration Capabilities
    • Supports diverse robot styles and application fields
    • Allows incremental replacement aligned with production cycles
    • Reduces cost of ownership through compatibility with new components
  3. Flexibility and Open Standards
    • Prioritizes “style flexibility” to adapt robot designs
    • Users can choose between complete robots or individual components
    • Promotes open standards to encourage innovation and third-party contributions
  4. Stakeholders
    • Component providers
      • Specialize in core strengths, benefiting from open standards
    • Researchers
      • Access affordable, modular components to simplify embedded systems research
  5. Technical Requirements for Open Architecture
    • Extensibility
      • Accommodates varied configurations
    • Interoperability
      • Ensures seamless communication between systems
    • Portability
      • Allows software and components to work across platforms
    • Scalability
      • Adjusts to user expertise and development needs
  6. Generic System Functional Reference Model (GSFRM)
    • Comprises basic system, extension system, and development system
    • Facilitates extensibility and user-friendly development
  7. Layering in Robot Architecture
    • Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL)
      • Interfaces physical components
    • System Service Layer (SSL)
      • Manages core services
    • Application Layer (APL)
      • Supports user applications
  8. Configurable Physical Components (CPCs)
    • Serial bus for physical connections
    • Non-volatile memory for plug-and-play functionality
  9. Software Design Principles
    • Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)
      • Enables reusable and upgradeable software
    • Mechanics Independent APIs (MI-APIs)
      • Separates mechanics-dependent and independent layers for software portability
  10. Levels of Style Flexibility
    • Electrical/mechanical connection
      • Easy attachment/detachment of components
    • Function/shape/topology/dynamics configuration
      • Automatic recognition of component features and positions
    • Semantic configuration
      • Registers functional roles of components (e.g., hand, leg)
  11. Design Opportunities
    • Plug-and-play at the semantic level remains difficult due to learning and embodiment challenges
    • Robots must sense and adapt to real-world interactions
    • Manual setting
      • Traditional method with designer intervention
    • Categorization method
      • Predefined configuration categories for automated software updates
    • Evolutionary Computing
      • Self-organizing modules for adaptive control and behavior