Development of a Design Methodology for Cloud Distributed Control Systems of Mobile Robots

Abstract

This article addresses the problem of cloud distributed control systems development for mobile robots. The authors emphasize the lack of a design methodology to guide the process of the development in accordance with specific technical and economic requirements for the robot. On the analysis of various robots architectures, the set of the nine most significant parameters are identified to direct the development stage by stage. Based on those parameters, the design methodology is proposed to build a scalable three-level cloud distributed control system for a robot. The application of the methodology is demonstrated on the example of AnyWalker open source robotics platform. The developed methodology is also applied to two other walking robots illustrated in the article.

Modeling and Analysis of Distributed Control Systems: Proposal of a Methodology

“…In this case, each mobile robot is an independent functional unit comprising lower levels of a DCS, including monitoring its surroundings and controlling its own movement. Higher levels of control are usually implemented outside of the mobile robots themselves, using external computers that provide supervisory control, tactical planning, or data acquisition and archiving [46,47].…”