CAMUS: a middleware supporting context-aware services for network-based robots

A URC (ubiquitous robotic companion) is a concept for a network-based service robot. It allows the service robot to extend its functions and services by utilizing external sensor networks and remote computing servers. It also provides the robot´s services at any time and any place. The URC requires not only the hardware infrastructure such as ubiquitous networks or sensor networks and high-performance computing servers but also the software infrastructure which resides above the hardware infrastructure. In this paper, authors introduce the CAMUS (context-aware middleware for URC system) as a part of the software infrastructure, which is a system middleware to support context-aware services for network-based robots. The CAMUS is based on the CORBA technology. It provides the common data model for different types of context information from external sensors, applications and users in the environment. It also offers the software framework to acquire, interpret and disseminate context information. PLUE (Programming Language for Ubiquitous Environment) is proposed to describe context-aware services for robots.