Development of middleware based control system for a service robot

This paper proposes a state of the art control system for a service robot based on the service/client architecture of Jini over an open network. Jini based on Java runnable on multi-platform is the middleware technology which is designed for network plug-and-play, no hardware/software distinction, spontaneous networking and simple connecting procedure. This paper shows the architecture of the Java-runnable embedded system and resource sharing technique based on the Jini technology. Basically the proposed system is open to various client devices such as PC, PDA(Personal Digital Assistance) and possibly information appliances, differently from the conventional remote control systems which use only PC as its client environment to access the robot service. The target robot is teleoperable via the standard point-and-click mouse commands over the World Wide Web. Some experimental results show the efficiency of the proposed near on-line control system which is designed according to the proposed procedure in this paper.