Francisco J. Ortiz

Design of service robots

This article relates our experiences over the last 15 years in the development of robotic applications within the field of service robotics, using the techniques proposed by software engineering. The process began with domain engineering and reference architectures, moved on to component-oriented development, and currently centered on model-driven design. One of the key problems in software development for robotic systems is that the possibilities of reusing software in new applications are frequently limited. This means that we are forced over and over to solve the same problems starting practically from zero every time. The possible causes of this include the following: 1) robotics specialists normally concentrate more on developing algorithms and the way to solve concrete problems than on organizing the software; 2) lack of good standards for the development of robotic software and implementations of these standards; 3) the case studies conducted to demonstrate the viability of software engineering techniques traditionally deal with information management systems; and 4) the robotics community see software engineering not as a solution but as another problem that adds complexity to already complex problems. This research has helped to demonstrate the viability of using software engineering techniques in real industrial applications, albeit using academic tools that cannot readily be accepted by industry.

A cost-effective robotic solution for the cleaning of ships' hulls

Hull cleaning before repainting is a key operation in the maintenance of ships. For more than a decade, a means to improve this operation has been sought through robotization and the use of different techniques such as grit blasting and ultra high pressure water jetting. Despite this, it continues to be standard practice in shipyards that this process is carried out manually. This paper presents a family of robots that aims to offer important improvements to the process as well as satisfying, to a great extent, all the operative requirements of efficiency, security, and respect for the environment that shipyards nowadays demand. It is described the family of devices with emphasis on the mechanical design. This set consists of two vertical robotic towers and a robot climber. In addition, it is shown the control architecture of the global system. Finally, operative results are presented together with a comparison between the performance achieved in shipyards through the use of these robots and those obtained with a manual process.

Robots for hull ship cleaning

A critical operation for ship maintenance is periodical hull blasting before re-painting. Up to date some partial solutions exist like blasting turbines for vertical surfaces or water blasting units for striping. This paper presents the EFTCoR family of robots, designed by DSIE, that represent an integral solution for hull blasting that achieves the efficiency, safety and environmental requirements of shipyards. The paper also shows the results of the tests performed under real working conditions and a brief summary of the architectural framework for the robotic systems development.

An architectural framework for modeling teleoperated service robots

Teleoperated robots are used to perform tasks that human operators cannot carry out because of the nature of the tasks themselves or the hostile nature of the working environment. Though many control architectures have been defined for developing these kinds of systems reusing common components, none has attained all its objectives because of the high variability of system behaviors. This paper presents a new architectural approach that takes into account the latest advances in robotic architectures while adopting a component-oriented approach. This approach provides a common framework for developing robotized systems with very different behaviors and for integrating intelligent components. The architecture is currently being used, tested and improved in the development of a family of teleoperated robots which perform cleaning of ship-hull surfaces.

Model-driven analysis and design for software development of autonomous underwater vehicles

Software engineering plays a key role in state-of-the-art robotics where more effective and efficient software development solutions are needed for implementation and integration of advanced robotics capabilities. Component-based software engineering and model-driven software development are two paradigms suitable to deal with such challenges. This paper presents the analysis, design, and implementation of control software for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). The software development stages are carried out by using a model-driven toolchain that provides support to design and build component-based software for robotics applications. A case study of a high-performance AUV control application and experimental results from a software schedulability analysis are presented.

An integrated domain analysis approach for teleoperated systems

Teleoperated systems for ship hull maintenance (TOS) are robotic systems for ship maintenance tasks, such as cleaning or painting a ship’s hull. The product line paradigm has recently been applied to TOS, and a TOS reference architecture has thus been designed. However, TOS requirements specifications have not been developed in any rigorous way with reuse in mind. We therefore believe that an opportunity exists to increase the abstraction level at which stakeholders can reason about this product line. This paper reports an experience in which this TOS domain was analyzed, including the lessons learned in the construction and use of the TOS domain model. The experience is based on the application of extensions of well-known domain analysis techniques, together with the use of quality attribute templates traced to a feature model to deal with non-functional issues. A qualitative research method (action research) was used to carry out the experience.

A reference control architecture for service robots implemented on a climbing vehicle

Teleoperated robots are used to perform hazardous tasks that human operators cannot carry out. The purpose of this paper is to present a new architecture (ACROSET) for the development of these systems that takes into account the current advances in robotic architectures while adopting the component-oriented approach. The architecture is currently being used, tested and improved in the development of an heterogeneous family of robots in the context of the EFTCoR project. It is also presented the Ada’95 implementation of ACROSET for a climbing robot.

Service robot for hull-blasting

Present grit blasting technology for hull cleaning is very polluting, environmentally unaffordable, and it is progressively forbidden in the most environmentally conscious countries (mainly in the north of Europe). For the time being, the above methodology has been partially substituted by ultra high-pressure water blasting; however such an approach does not show as good a performance as the grit blasting systems. This paper describes a service robot for hull blasting. The technology the authors developed consists of a cleaning head, a robot body, a remote control unit and a teleoperation platform. This solution allows reliable and cost effective operation regarding hull grit blasting, obtaining a high quality surface preparation (SA 2 1/2 ) together with a dramatic reduction of waste and zero emissions to the environment. A prototype of the robot has been developed and tested in the IZAR shipyards. The authors present the functional requirements, system concepts and architecture of this robot.

A Component-Based Meta-Model and Framework in the Model Driven Toolchain C-Forge

This paper describes a Component-Based Meta-Model (WCOMM) and framework (FraCC) as part of a complete Model-Driven Software Development process and toolchain: C-Forge. The approach given in the design of WCOMM and FraCC is presented highlighting the differences with other similar approaches. To illustrate the use of C-Forge, the development of a control architecture for the robots in project MISSION is presented.

A Reference Control Architecture for Service Robots as applied to a Climbing Vehicle

abstract components to specify the architecture of different robots, while automatic model transformation will keep them synchronised with the implementation. Moreover, it is desirable (and in our opinion possible) to define different transformations to obtain implementation components according to the most suitable robotic frameworks. 5. ACROSET: Reference Control Architectural Framework for Teleoperated Service Robots ACROSET comprises a reference architecture and an abstract component framework which allows the definition of different architectures in a platform-independent way. In addition, it proposes a set of subsystems to organize the functionality of the whole system. These subsystems were defined following the ABD method (Bachmann et al., 2001), which helps in choosing an architectural option to fulfil the given requirements. The subsystems defined by ACROSET (shown in Figure 7) are the following: • The Coordination, Control and Abstraction Subsystem (CCAS). • The Intelligence Subsystem (IS). • User Interface Subsystem (UIS). • Safety, Management and Configuration Subsystem (SMCS). A detailed explanation of these subsystems can be found in (Alvarez et al, 2006). In this section we will try to give an overview of them, especially of the CCAS. Figure 7. An overview of ACROSET subsystems