Survey on Robotic Systems Integration

Software integration is central to successfully developing, deploying, and operating robotics applications. Yet, the particular integration process and its challenges are poorly understood. The continuous evolution of the robotics sector, incorporating constantly a growing number of technologies, makes the unification of processes increasingly complicated. Nevertheless, current research on robotics software integration largely focuses on specific integration activities instead of considering the overall activity as a process. To provide some insight into the state of robotics software integration, we drove a survey among researchers and practitioners in the field. In this survey, we inquired how robotics software integration is currently performed in order to identify similarities with traditional software development methodologies. Through this study, we discovered commonalities in the phases of the process and potential directions of a future research to address the current challenges in the area.