A software architecture for multi-criteria decision making for advanced robotics

This paper presents a framework that facilitates the development of multi-criteria decision-making software for redundant manipulator control. This software architecture is based on object-oriented design and it meets the requirements of generality, extensibility, computational efficiency, and reduction in program development time. Analysis, design, and implementation were the three steps in the development of this architecture. Analysis involved the study of the multi-criteria decision-making domain. This included the information flow between different criteria and also their fusion. The design phase involved extracting the commonalties of various criteria and the specification of abstractions that could best model these criteria. The application of this philosophy led to the development of an architecture that is robot independent, scaleable, supports standardized interfaces, and is applicable to real-time control and simulation. This architecture is demonstrated using a sample application for controlling a 10 DOF manipulator.