Autonomous robots are complex systems that require the interaction between numerous heterogeneous components (software and hardware). Because of the increase in complexity of robotic applications and the diverse range of hardware, robotic middleware is designed to manage the complexity and heterogeneity of the hardware and applications, promote the integration of new technologies, simplify software design, hide the complexity of low-level communication and the sensor heterogeneity of the sensors, improve software quality, reuse robotic software infrastructure across multiple research efforts, and to reduce production costs. This paper presents a literature survey and attribute-based bibliography of the current state of the art in robotic middleware design. The main aim of the survey is to assist robotic middleware researchers in evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of current approaches and their appropriateness for their applications. Furthermore, we provide a comprehensive set of appropriate bibliographic references that are classified based on middleware attributes.

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The estimation of the performance characteristics of robot manipulators is crucial in robot application and design. Furthermore, studying the manipulability index for every point within the workspace of any serial manipulator is considered an important problem. Such studies are required for designing trajectories to avoid singular configurations. In this article, a new method for measuring the manipulability index is proposed, and then some simulations are performed on different industrial manipulators such as the Puma 560 manipulator, a six DOF manipulator and the Mitsubishi Movemaster manipulator.

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