Safe Mobile Robot Control in the iSpace Environment

Abstract

Robots and other intelligent systems in human environment need high-level cognitive capabilities to enable the achievement of complex goals in complex environments using limited computational resources. Robotic cognitive capabilities include attention allocation, planning, perception processing, reasoning about the other agents and the environment. This paper presents an approach for safe robot controlling using the Intelligent Space. In the iSpace networked distributed sensors observe and gather information from the space. In this environment mobile robots can be tracked with ultrasonic positioning system, the topological map can be build using laser range finders and other properties of the space can be recognized. The recognized properties of the space and the mobile code technology make it possible to extend the control framework of mobile robots with components in a safe way. The mobile code is a program-component obtained from a remote system, transferred across a network and dynamically downloaded and executed on the robots. This code is created, verified, stored and transmitted to the robot using the Certified Proved-Property-Carrying Code architecture, where properties and their proofs also attached to the code. The receiver can verify the proofs and it can decide whether to use or to refuse the received mobile component.