URBI: towards a universal robotic body interface

The recent development of cheap and powerful humanoid and animal-like robots has been accompanied by the development of a variety of softwares, libraries and other interfaces to control the robots. The diversity and complexity of these interfaces slow down the development of robotics and we believe that there is a need for a standard which could be universal, powerful and easy to implement. URBI, a universal robotic body interface, aims at providing the ground for such a standard. It is based on a client/server architecture. The server is running on the robot and accessed by the client, typically via TCP/IP. URBI includes a scripted language used from the client and capable of controlling the joints of the robot or access its sensors, camera, speakers or any accessible part of the machine. We describe here how URBI differs from currently existing solutions, and present its specifications and capabilities using practical examples. We also introduce the URBI C++ library which provides a simple and yet powerful way to program a client and to make a full use of the functionalities of URBI. We also give examples of URBI running on an Aibo ERS7 and analyse the performances of this implementation over the wireless connection.