A Generic Synchronous Dataflow Architecture to Rapidly Prototype and Deploy Robot Controllers

TL;DR

This paper introduces a flexible, open-source dataflow architecture that streamlines the prototyping and deployment of robot controllers, supporting various tools and demonstrated on a humanoid robot example.

Contribution

It presents a generic actor-oriented framework and a model-based design pipeline that can interface with any tool supporting model-based design.

Findings

Effective in designing a balancing controller for iCub robot

Supports interfacing with Simulink and Simulink Coder

Facilitates rapid prototyping and deployment of robot controllers

Abstract

The paper presents a software architecture to optimize the process of prototyping and deploying robot controllers that are synthesized using model-based design methodologies. The architecture is composed of a framework and a pipeline. Therefore, the contribution of the paper is twofold. First, we introduce an open-source actor-oriented framework that abstracts the common robotic uses of middlewares, optimizers, and simulators. Using this framework, we then present a pipeline that implements the model-based design methodology. The components of the proposed framework are generic, and they can be interfaced with any tool supporting model-based design. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach describing the application of the resulting synchronous dataflow architecture to the design of a balancing controller for the YARP-based humanoid robot iCub. This example exploits the interfacing with Simulink and Simulink Coder.