Middleware Design for Swarm-Driving Robots Accompanying Humans

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Human-Robot Interaction
• Middleware Design

Background:

• Human-accompanying robots like Pet-Bot offer valuable services but are limited by the number of units a user can control.
• Expanding the capabilities of these robots requires a scalable solution for managing multiple units simultaneously.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a swarm-driving middleware design for enabling multiple human-accompanying robots to work collaboratively.
• To overcome the single-robot limitations of existing systems and enhance service provision through coordinated robot swarms.

Main Methods:

• Developed middleware with three core functions: sequence management, messaging, and relative-location identification.
• Utilized IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol for radio frequency (RF) communication and infrared (IR) signal strength for relative location.
• Implemented a swarm composition with a master robot interacting with the user and slave robots performing tasks.

Main Results:

• Evaluated the accuracy of relative-location estimation using IR communication.
• Assessed the response time of slave robots to user activity changes.
• Measured network organization time based on the number of slave robots.

Conclusions:

• The proposed swarm-driving middleware facilitates synchronized movement and parallel processing for multiple human-accompanying robots.
• This approach enhances the scalability and service capabilities of robot assistance systems by overcoming single-unit limitations.