Towards robot modularity — A review of international modularity standardization for service robots

The paper presents ISO standardization work carried out to formulate guidelines for service robot modularity for assisting the development of open plug-n-play modules that can be easily assembled to create application specific robots and robot systems. Although robot modularity has been an active research field for many years, the developments have had little impact on advancing robot markets due to their individualist nature and the results not having sufficiently wide relevance or appeal. The paper initially provides an overview of the new ISO 22166-1 service robot modularity standard and aims to illustrate how to implement it with several use cases. Specific innovations produced in realizing robot modules under the guidance of ISO are introduced and two simple approaches based on block diagram approaches (the line and circle diagrams) are proposed for implementing and designing modular robots. Finally, the paper presents several use cases as examples where the new ISO robot modular approach can be used to good effect. •First ISO modularity standardization for service robots.•Line and circle diagrams for modular representation.•Real commercial modular robots as user case examples are demonstrated.