Runtime monitoring of robotics software components: Increasing robustness of service robotic systems

Component Based Software Engineering is a common approach to master complexity in service robotic systems. Moreover, these systems must be robust and safe. Common robotic middlewares and frameworks provide component models with well defined communication mechanisms. However, generic means are missing to gain insight into running components. Components must be monitored (i) during their development for debugging purposes, (ii) during their integration into a system for verification and error detection purposes and (iii) at runtime for administration and online diagnosis purposes. This paper presents a generic concept for runtime monitoring of robotics software components which is independent of any specific robotic middleware and framework. After that, a reference implementation shows a concrete integration of the concept into the SmartSoft component model. Two real world scenarios at the end demonstrate the usage of monitoring.