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Abstract-Developers and end-users have to interface robotic systems for control and feedback. Such systems are typically co-engineered with their graphical user interfaces. In the past, a vast community of researchers has addressed issues of generality, deployment, usability, and re-usability of user interfaces. However, the support for creating graphical user interfaces in recent robotic frameworks is limited. In particular, there is typically no support for web-based teleoperation. In this work, we propose a new Java-based editor with a plugin architecture for GUI elements and communication ports. Special focus is laid on platform-independent design, easy extensibility, connectivity to different robotic frameworks, usability and deployment. The tool offers convenient creation of graphical user interfaces and can publish them over the web -making them accessible from any Java-enabled web browser. I. MOTIVATIONDevelopers and operators of technical systems need convenient access to control interfaces and state information. In the case of -but not limited to -mobile robotic systems, this interfacing software is deployed on external networked computers or mobile devices that carry the respective graphical user interface (GUI). Usually, during development a GUI is subject to multiple changes due to ongoing feature integration and debugging. Also, different human operators show different preferences in GUI design. This leads to the demand for editor tools capable of conveniently creating and editing GUIs. If well-designed, the GUI is free of system logic and is a separate component from the system to be controlled. Developers of robotic frameworks have already spent varying amounts of effort to provide such tooling. However, these tools are specifically designed to work with their respective frameworks and have limitations regarding flexibility and deployment. In section I-A, we discuss the capabilities of recent robotic development frameworks regarding these aspects.In this work, we propose a new Java-based GUI tool addressing the following areas:• editor for graphical user interfaces • independence from specific (robotic) applications and frameworks • extensible plugin architecture • web-based GUI deployment • robust handling of fluctuating connection link quality

In our societies, the number of senior citizens living on their own is increasing steadily. The lack of permanent attention results in the late detection of emergency situations. Labour-intensive care is already a high burden for the society, therefore it seems reasonable to promote technology that helps to detect and react in case of emergency situations that elderly people may encounter.In the last decade, assistive environments have been established by integrating surveillance devices into the living environments giving remote operators access to monitor the senior inhabitant at home for detecting emergency situations. However, due to poor privacy in terms of intrusion into the private life of an elderly person, there will be an unfavourably low acceptance of such systems.This paper introduces a two-stage strategy and proposes to replace a possibly large number of humancontrolled monitoring devices by a single autonomous mobile system. The first stage will be performed by the autonomous system to detect an emergency situation. The human operator will be obligatory only at the final stage when the system assumes that an emergency has occurred and the final evaluation of the situation is required. The self-assessment will reduce the human factor related to privacy issues.

Robotic software frameworks have major impact on development effort and quality of robot control systems. This paper provides a condensed overview on the complex topic of robotic framework design. Important areas of design are discussed -together with design principles applied in state-of-the-art solutions. They are related to software quality attributes with a brief discussion on their impact. Based on this analysis, the approaches taken in the framework Finroc are briefly presented. MotivationSoftware frameworks have major impact on development effort and quality attributes of robot control systems -especially when systems grow beyond a certain size. Hence, how to design such frameworks is an important question of research in order to make progress in robotics. Researchers and engineers spend a significant amount of time in software development and integration. Many authors have shared their views and insights on this topic, as well as presenting approaches and implementations to cope with this complex challenge. Numerous solutions following different design philosophies have been developed and it is time-consuming to get an accurate overview on the state of the art. Many notable approaches get only limited attention in the community and are not easy to find.From extensive literature research as well as from our own experience with the development of complex robot control systems and frameworks, we attempt to provide a condensed overview in this paper -with a focus on the following questions: -What are important and central areas of design? -Which practices and principles are proposed? -What is their impact on software quality?Derived from this overview, the design choices we have taken in the Finroc [23] framework¹ are briefly presented and discussed. They were systematically evaluated with respect to their impact on relevant quality attributes of robot control systems and of the framework itself. Figure 1 lists quality attributes that we consider especially relevant across a wide range of control systems for service robots [23]. Furthermore, a selection of important areas in robotic framework design is presented -as well as a range of design principles, methodologies, and policies proposed in literature. These design decisions and principles have an impact on many quality attributes of robot control systems. Important relations are illustrated. In order to keep the figure clear, this is a very limited selection per item. In this chapter, many of these areas, principles, and relations are discussed. Design aspects and principles System decompositionFor system decomposition, all popular robotic frameworks follow a modular approach -aiming at reusable software artifacts that applications are constructed from. "It is both desirable and necessary to develop robotic software in a modular fashion without sacrificing performance" [6]. Robot controls commonly consist of soft-1