Development of service robotic system based on robot technology middleware

We have been developing services robotic system in order to improve care cost and the QoL of the elderly people in the population-aging society. This paper presents that the improvements of the developed system has been doing from a practical viewpoint. A novel method of localization of mobile robot by using RFID (radio frequency identification) system with a camera is proposed as it is inexpensive, flexible and easy to use in the practical environment. In addition, interactive object operation interface is developed in order to improve system performance of interaction. We implement robotic functional elements as "RT software component", which makes application and system integration easier. AIST (Japan) developed RT software component framework, called RTM (robot technology middleware) to promote application of robot technology (RT) in various fields. RTM is based on CORBA, so it has high scaling and inter-operating ability to allow components that are written in different languages, run in different operating system, or connected in different networks to inter-operate. This facilitates network-distributed software sharing and improves the cost of writing and maintaining software.