A novel model-driven approach to support development cycle of robotic systems

Abstract

Currently, industrial robots are decisive in modern production facilities, and in a near future, robots will also become essential in daily life. In fact, the main aim of robotic manipulator relies on the integration of robots into people’s daily. To this purpose, there are a great number of physical devices, such as sensors, actuators, auxiliary elements, tools etc. which can be incorporated into a robot. Although integration, reuse, flexibility and adaptability are crucial characteristics demanded by current robotic applications, there is a lack of standardization in terms of hardware and software platforms, providing incompatible task-specific and non-reusable solutions. Consequently, there is a need for a new engineering methodology to design, implement and execute software systems. This work explores the advantages that model-driven engineering provides for the development of applications for robotic manipulators’ platforms. Specifically, a modelling approach is developed to generate the target code automatically. To validate the proposal, a tool that allows the final code to be generated for most spread communication middlewares in the robotics field is also presented.