Introduction

This article gives a short overview of general-purpose robotics software platforms currently available for service robotics applications. The article is a compilation of the knowledge the author accumulated during recent experimentation work.

What is a robotics software platform?

By a "robotics software platform" we mean a software package that simplifies programming of several kinds of robotic devices by providing:

• a unified programming environment
  
• a unified service execution environment
  
• a set of reusable components
  
• a debugging/simulation environment
  
• a package of "drivers" for most wide-spread robotics hardware
  
• a package of common facilities such as computer vision, navigation or robotic arm control

As you see, there are several major components in any robotics software platform. None of the existing products was a perfect match from my point of view. Most of the products were missing something.

Robotic Software Platforms

Platform	Type
Evolution Robotics ERSP	Platform	Commercial
Microsoft Robotics Studio	Platform	Commercial Free of charge for research and hobby
OROCOS	Machine and robot control libraries	Open source & free
Skilligent	Robot learning add-on	Commercial
URBI	Platform	Commercial
Webots	Simulation environment	Commercial
Player, Stage, Gazebo	Platform	Open Source & Free
iRobot AWARE	Platform	Commercial
OpenJAUS	Platform	Open source
CLARAty	Platform	Open source

Why robotics software platform?

The cost of control software accounts for a large share of the overall cost of a typical robotics project. For example, up to 80 percent of an industrial automation project is spent on system integration, which includes software development/customization. So, the main idea behind any robotics software platform is to simplify the job of robotics software engineers -- and thus reduce the project cost.

Besides software engineering challenges, there is still much AI research work left to be done when it comes to robotics. A set of reliable off-the-shelf software components integrated into a unified platform can really help to kick start any serious robotics project.

Finally, a behavior coordination problem needs to be addressed in the overall control system's architecture. Several behavior coordination approaches have been proposed in the research literature. Because this is a common problem, some of the robotics platforms provide a unified solution to the problem.

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