An Action Framework for Robots based on Distributed Knowledge Base

We have proposed an action framework for robots based on distributed knowledge base. An action framework is to resolve a requested command into a sequence of actions of robots. The framework is based on a general command interpreter and an object oriented software environment that supports distributed software development of robots. A general command interpreter takes a command and decomposes the command into a set of subcommands. It repeats this process until the subcommands reach to a robot motion sequence. In contrast to industrial robots, service robots need to know vast variety of objects around them. Thus, service robots program should incorporate all those objects. However, it is usually very difficult because the environment, in which service robots will work, has a lot of things of which combination is unpredictable. Therefore the distributed software development is very important, because it enables that a lot of developers can jointly develop a system. This framework uses not only the knowledge of robots, but also the knowledge of objects in the working environment of robots. Thus, robots need not know all the things in the environment beforehand to start a task, but the robots will get necessary information from the existing objects in the environment during the execution of the task.