Skinware 2.0: A real-time middleware for robot skin

• Main Authors: S. Youssefi, S. Denei, F. Mastrogiovanni, G. Cannata
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2015-12-01
• Series: SoftwareX
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352711015000102

Robot skins have emerged recently as products of research from various institutes worldwide. Each robot skin is designed with different applications in mind. As a result, they differ in many aspects from transduction technology and structure to communication protocols and timing requirements. These differences create a barrier for researchers interested in developing tactile processing algorithms for robots using the sense of touch; supporting multiple robot skin technologies is non-trivial and committing to a single technology is not as useful, especially as the field is still in its infancy. The Skinware middleware has been created to mitigate these issues by providing abstractions and real-time acquisition mechanisms. This article describes the second revision of Skinware, discussing the differences with respect to the first version. Keywords: Robot skin, Tactile, Middleware, Skinware, Software, Framework