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Cloud Networked Robotics

Speaker: Kai-Wei PingAdvisor: Prof Dr. Ho-Ting Wu

2013/04/08

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Purpose

• supporting daily activity• especially for the elderly and the disabled

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Outline

• Introduction• Cloud Networked Robotics• Challenges• Life Support Robot Technology project

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Introduction

• With the rapid growth of the Internet and the spread of smartphones, our lifestyles are greatly changing.

• Such slow but stable change for the forthcoming aged society requires further changes that cannot be fulfilled by technology enhancement in cyberspace.

• Physical supports in the real world, which can only be acted upon by such new devices as robots, are emergently required.

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Introduction

• Even though improving reusability and mutual connectivity, they remain insufficient for thoroughly supporting daily activities.

• As such, the activities of our daily life consist of sequences of different tasks performed in different contexts.

• Complexity, Cost

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Networked Robot

• A ‘networked robot’ is a robotic device connected to a communications network such as the Internet or LAN. The network could be wired or wireless, and based on any of a variety of protocols such as TCP, UDP, or 802.11

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Cloud Networked Robotics

• Cloud Networked Robotics, which abstracts robotic functionalities and provides a means for utilizing them.

• These “robots” are logically gathered to form a cloud of robots by networking to realize an integrated system that provides seamless support in daily activities using the available resources on demand

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Cloud Networked Robotics

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Cloud Computing

• The technologies of web services and serviceoriented architecture (SOA), which form the technical foundation of cloud computing, have also been applied to robotic technologies in three ways.

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Cloud Computing

• One is the utilization of computational resources for enhancing the abilities of robots on cloud servers

• Knowledge sharing and the exchange of semantic information.

• Another approach utilizes robotic resources as a cloud to solve the issue of continuous support in robotic services.

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Robots

• Visible types are physically embodied agents with a physical actuation facility

• Virtual types appear on the screens of mobile information devices as agents for communicating with users

• Unconscious types are mainly deployed in environments for sensing and form ambient intelligence

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Challenges

• Combining stand-alone robots or multi-robot systems , networked robots and Cloud computing are not sufficient for continuously supporting daily activities.

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Challenges

• Multi-Robot Management• Multi-Area Management• User Attribute Management• Service Coordination Management

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Life Support Robot Technology

• It aims at the development of life support robots with high safety, reliability, and adaptability to enable robots to coexist with people in human living environments.

• Six robotic services ： remote listening support service, community formation service, healthcare service, shopping support service, customer attracting service, and touring support service.

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Life Support Robot Technology

• In the project, the common functionalities described in the previous section are implemented as a common infrastructure system called the Ubiquitous Network Robot Platform

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UNR-PF

• UNR-PF itself is composed of two platform layers: a local platform (LPF) and a global platform (GPF)

• The database functions consist of robot, map, user, and operator registries, and service cues.

• The management functions consist of state, resource, and message managers.

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Case Study

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Field Testing

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Conclusion

• This article proposed the concept of Cloud Networked Robotics, which targets continuous support of daily activities that cannot be satisfied by stand-alone robotic services or by networked robotic services

• Many other aspects must be studied,including scalability and dependability

• Moreover, cloud networked robot systems will likely encounter security and ethical issues

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Reference

• K. Kamei, S. Nishio, N. Hagita, and M. Sato, ” Cloud Networked Robotics,” IEEE Network., vol. 26, no. 3, 2012, pp. 28 - 34.

• A. Sanfeliu, N. Hagita, and A. Saffiotti, “Network Robot Systems,” Robotics and Autonomous Systems, vol. 56, no. 10, 2008, pp. 793–97.