Robotic Systems of Systems Based on a Decentralized Service-Oriented Architecture

Multi-robot systems are often static and pre-configured during the design time of their software. Emerging cooperation between unknown robots is still rare and limited. Such cooperation might be basic like sharing sensor data or complex like conjoined motion planning and acting. Robots should be able to detect other robots and their abilities during runtime. When cooperation seems to be possible and beneficial, it should be initiated autonomously. A centralized cloud control shall be avoided. Using software patterns belonging to service-oriented architectures, the robots are able to discover other robots and their abilities during runtime. These abilities are implemented as services and described by their interfaces. Composition of services can be done easily and flexibly. The software patterns originally belonging to cloud computing could be successfully adopted to decentralized multi-robot systems. The developed concept allows autonomous systems to cooperate flexibly and to compose multi-robot systems during runtime.