Challenges and Solutions in Robotics ◾ 5
appropriate reaction. However, the data provided by sensors can arrive asynchronously in
a complex and rapidly changing manner. erefore, for robot soware design, it is a chal-
lenge to combine all the data received while actively controlling the robot’s motion. is is
a limitation of the conventional approach of robot design to utilize sequential procedure
soware that enables a robot to perform only one task at a time. us the soware cannot
process sensed readings while also controlling the motion element. As a result, it is unable
to react to changes swily. As an example, consider how we normally cross a road. To cross
a road, we simultaneously observe trac coming from our le and right (i.e., sensing) and
quickly cross the road when it is clear (i.e., movement). ese two tasks occur simultane-
ously and do not interfere with each another, or in other words, they are performed in a
concurrent procedure. Although the concurrent procedure concept, commonly referred to
as parallel computing, distributed computing, and multi-thread processing, is well devel-
oped, its applications in robots are still rudimentary. In particular, it is very dicult for a
concurrent program to extract the essence of sensed information (e.g., determining incom-
ing vehicles) and, at the same time, control movement (e.g., crossing the road). Issues such
as determining whether or not to sense and move a robot simultaneously, prioritizing the
tasks to perform, and dissecting and processing information at the same time collectively
present a major challenge to building a robot’s program design.
1.2.3 Challenge 3: How Can We Unify the Development Platform?
As early industrial robots incorporated only basic functionalities, the design of each robot
was targeted to meet industry demands and components. Consequently, dierent soware
systems were developed, such as the ERSP platform originating from the Evolution Robotics
and the commercial platform NI as proposed by National Instruments (NI). ere are
also some other platforms for research purposes, such as the Player/Stage platform origi-
nating from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Stanford University. Although
these soware systems are incompatible with one another, each system performs well in
its respective area. However, this incompatibility is a soware barrier in the development
of universal robots. In addition, it would be unfortunate if the robot soware developed
for one system could not be easily ported for use in another system. e list of issues to be
addressed includes designing a single common interface for universal robots, enabling a
central public repository for robot soware, giving developers the exibility to reuse pre-
viously implemented soware components, and so on. All of these issues represent major
challenges for soware platform design.
1.3 EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT
OF SERVICE ROBOTS
e successful development of robotics research is heavily reliant on contributions from
domain experts, similar to many other elds of study. At the present stage of robotics
education, courses relating to the hardware layer (such as hardware organization design,
machine dynamics, and electronics) and soware design (such as parallel processing,
image recognition, and articial intelligence) have developed progressively over the years