A New HLA-Based Distributed Control Architecture for Agricultural Teams of Robots in Hybrid Applications with Real and Simulated Devices or Environments

Abstract

The control architecture is one of the most important part of agricultural robotics and other robotic systems. Furthermore its importance increases when the system involves a group of heterogeneous robots that should cooperate to achieve a global goal. A new control architecture is introduced in this paper for groups of robots in charge of doing maintenance tasks in agricultural environments. Some important features such as scalability, code reuse, hardware abstraction and data distribution have been considered in the design of the new architecture. Furthermore, coordination and cooperation among the different elements in the system is allowed in the proposed control system. By integrating a network oriented device server Player, Java Agent Development Framework (JADE) and High Level Architecture (HLA), the previous concepts have been considered in the new architecture presented in this paper. HLA can be considered the most important part because it not only allows the data distribution and implicit communication among the parts of the system but also allows to simultaneously operate with simulated and real entities, thus allowing the use of hybrid systems in the development of applications.

Mobile sensor platforms: categorisation and research applications in precision farming

“…Moreover, Nebot et al (2011) explained the importance of a controlling architecture in order to run a mobile sensor platform with a higher degree of automation. As the most important part of a robotic system, it has to allow coordination and cooperation between the different system elements.…”

“…As the most important part of a robotic system, it has to allow coordination and cooperation between the different system elements. "The right choice of the architecture can facilitate the specification, implementation and validation of the applications implemented for the system" (Nebot et al, 2011). Robot architecture has been developed with having in mind principles such as scalability, code reuse, abstraction hardware and data distribution (Nebot et al, 2011).…”

“…"The right choice of the architecture can facilitate the specification, implementation and validation of the applications implemented for the system" (Nebot et al, 2011). Robot architecture has been developed with having in mind principles such as scalability, code reuse, abstraction hardware and data distribution (Nebot et al, 2011). "Having a universal system, modularity, openness, extendibility and simplicity are important assets" (Orebäck, 2004).…”

“…Makarenko et al (2006) proposed that a "successful framework for a robot should be (1) open source, (2) distributed under a license which allows use in commercial applications, (3) modular, and (4) distributed with a repository of tested and documented modules." A comparison among different contemporary architectures for robots is shown and evaluated by Nebot et al (2011). The authors discussed architectures for the field of cooperative robot systems (see Sect.…”

“…AGRITURE was designed for implementation of a control system on a team of mobile robots in agricultural environments. It can interact with real and simulated devices, which is useful for optimizing the whole system (Nebot et al, 2011). FroboMind, based on ROS, is a conceptual architecture for a robot control system.…”