A Plug and Play Transparent Communication Layer for Cloud Robotics Architectures
1
The BioRobotics Insititute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Viale Rinaldo Piaggio 34, 56025 Pontedera, Italy
2
Department of Excellence in Robotics & AI, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Piazza Martiri della Libertà 33, 56127 Pisa, Italy
3
Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Florence, Via Santa Marta 3, 50139 Florence, Italy
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Robotics 2020, 9(1), 17; https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics9010017
Received: 31 January 2020 / Revised: 15 March 2020 / Accepted: 20 March 2020 / Published: 22 March 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Robotics Research for Healthy Living and Active Ageing)
The cloud robotics paradigm aims at enhancing the abilities of robots by using cloud services, but it still poses several challenges in the research community. Most of the current literature focuses on how to enrich specific robotic capabilities, overlooking how to effectively establish communication between the two fields. Our work proposes a “plug-and-play” solution to bridge the communication gap between cloud and robotic applications. The proposed solution is designed based on the mature WebSocket technology and it can be extended to any ROS-based robotic platform. The main contributions of this work are the definition of a reliable autoconnection/autoconfiguration mechanism as well as to outline a scalable communication layer that allows the effective control of multiple robots from multiple users. The “plug-and-play” solution was evaluated in both simulated and real scenarios. In the first case, the presence of users and robots was simulated with Robot Operating System (ROS) nodes running on five machines. In the real scenario, three non-expert users teleoperated, simultaneously, three remote robots by using the proposed communication layer with different networking protocols. Results confirmed the reliability at different levels: at startup (success_rate = 100%); during high-rate communications (message_lost = 0%); in performing open-loop spiral trajectories with enhancement, with respect to similar works; and in the quality of simultaneous teleoperations.
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MDPI and ACS Style
Sorrentino, A.; Cavallo, F.; Fiorini, L. A Plug and Play Transparent Communication Layer for Cloud Robotics Architectures. Robotics 2020, 9, 17. https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics9010017
AMA Style
Sorrentino A, Cavallo F, Fiorini L. A Plug and Play Transparent Communication Layer for Cloud Robotics Architectures. Robotics. 2020; 9(1):17. https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics9010017
Chicago/Turabian StyleSorrentino, Alessandra; Cavallo, Filippo; Fiorini, Laura. 2020. "A Plug and Play Transparent Communication Layer for Cloud Robotics Architectures" Robotics 9, no. 1: 17. https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics9010017
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