CLARAty: Challenges and Steps Toward Reusable Robotic Software

• Main Authors: Richard Madison, John Guineau, I-Hsiang Shu, Michael McHenry, Tara Estlin, Clayton Kunz, Antonio Diaz-Calderon, Daniel Gaines, Reid Simmons, Issa A.D. Nesnas, David Apfelbaum
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publishing 2008-11-01
• Series: International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems
• Subjects: reusable robotic software; robotic framework; interoperable robotic software; robotic architecture; object-oriented robotics
• Online Access: http://www.intechopen.com/articles/show/title/claraty__challenges_and_steps_toward_reusable_robotic_software

We present in detail some of the challenges in developing reusable robotic software. We base that on our experience in developing the CLARAty robotics software, which is a generic object-oriented framework used for the integration of new algorithms in the areas of motion control, vision, manipulation, locomotion, navigation, localization, planning and execution. CLARAty was adapted to a number of heterogeneous robots with different mechanisms and hardware control architectures. In this paper, we also describe how we addressed some of these challenges in the development of the CLARAty software.