Study of framework based on roles for application development of service robots

The modern approach for developing service robot applications is by the use of robotics middleware. Various issues are still present and several projects attempt to address them. However, an important issue that impacts the developers and integrators has not yet been thoroughly analyzed: usability. The usability of the development tools needs to be improved; it is required to access and work with service robots (and their components) with the least effort possible. This issue affects the introduction of service robots into the real world. In this article, we propose the Framework for Integration of Elements and Resources by Roles (FIERRo) to address the usability problem by making the items needed by developers and integrators as easily available and organized as possible. Description of example applications include: modeling of two independent robot systems, system development using and not using the FIERRo (hypotheses were set), and a simulated GUI. Social impact and future works are discussed thereafter.