A generic architecture for a class of distributed robotic systems is presented. The architecture supports openness and heterogeneity, i.e. heterogeneous components may be joined and removed from the systems without affecting its basic functionality. The architecture is based on the paradigm of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and a generic representation (ontology) of the environment. A device (e.g. robot) is seen as a collection of its capabilities exposed as services. Generic protocols for publishing, discovering, arranging services are proposed for creating composite services that can accomplish complex tasks in an automatic way. Also generic protocols for execution of composite services are proposed along with simple protocols for monitoring the executions, and for recovery from failures. A software platform built on a multi-robot system (according to the proposed architecture) is a multi-agent system.

Abstract. An approach to the problem of interoperability in open and heterogeneous multirobot system is presented. It is based on the paradigm of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and a generic representation of the environment. A robot, and generally a cognitive and intelligent device, is seen as a collection of its capabilities exposed as services. Several experimental protocols (for publishing, discovering, arranging, and executing the composite services) are proposed in order to assure the interoperability in the system. The environment representation, the description language for tasks and service interfaces definition, as well as the protocols constitute together the proposed information technology for automatic task accomplishment in an open heterogeneous multirobot system.

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