Requirements for building an ontology for autonomous robots
Abstract
Purpose
IEEE Ontologies for Robotics and Automation Working Group were divided into subgroups that were in charge of studying industrial robotics, service robotics and autonomous robotics. This paper aims to present the work in-progress developed by the autonomous robotics (AuR) subgroup. This group aims to extend the core ontology for robotics and automation to represent more specific concepts and axioms that are commonly used in autonomous robots.
Design/methodology/approach
For autonomous robots, various concepts for aerial robots, underwater robots and ground robots are described. Components of an autonomous system are defined, such as robotic platforms, actuators, sensors, control, state estimation, path planning, perception and decision-making.
Findings
AuR has identified the core concepts and domains needed to create an ontology for autonomous robots.
Practical implications
AuR targets to create a standard ontology to represent the knowledge and reasoning needed to create autonomous systems that comprise robots that can operate in the air, ground and underwater environments. The concepts in the developed ontology will endow a robot with autonomy, that is, endow robots with the ability to perform desired tasks in unstructured environments without continuous explicit human guidance.
Originality/value
Creating a standard for knowledge representation and reasoning in autonomous robotics will have a significant impact on all R&A domains, such as on the knowledge transmission among agents, including autonomous robots and humans. This tends to facilitate the communication among them and also provide reasoning capabilities involving the knowledge of all elements using the ontology. This will result in improved autonomy of autonomous systems. The autonomy will have considerable impact on how robots interact with humans. As a result, the use of robots will further benefit our society. Many tedious tasks that currently can only be performed by humans will be performed by robots, which will further improve the quality of life. To the best of the authors’knowledge, AuR is the first group that adopts a systematic approach to develop ontologies consisting of specific concepts and axioms that are commonly used in autonomous robots.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was partly supported by CAPES and CNPq, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), New Brunswick Innovation Foundation (NBIF) and by FCT, through IDMEC, under LAETA, project UID/EMS/50022/2013.
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of their organizations. The reviewers’ comments are greatly appreciated. Our thanks must also go to Francesco Amigoni, Emilio Miguelanez, Craig Schlenoff, Raj Madhavan and other members of the IEEE RAS ontologies for robotics and automation working group: Gaetan Severac, Guilherme Raffo, Julian Angle, Aleksandar Stefanovski, Phillip J Durst and Wendell Gray’s for their contributions to the initial work presented at IEEE IROS.
Citation
Bayat, B., Bermejo-Alonso, J., Carbonera, J., Facchinetti, T., Fiorini, S., Goncalves, P., Jorge, V.A.M., Habib, M., Khamis, A., Melo, K., Nguyen, B., Olszewska, J.I., Paull, L., Prestes, E., Ragavan, V., Saeedi, S., Sanz, R., Seto, M., Spencer, B., Vosughi, A. and Li, H. (2016), "Requirements for building an ontology for autonomous robots", Industrial Robot, Vol. 43 No. 5, pp. 469-480. https://doi.org/10.1108/IR-02-2016-0059
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited