Engineering a Cognitive Robotics Platform

This article presents an ongoing process of engineering a state of the art cognitive robotics platform for research use at the university level. From specification and design, to choosing documentation techniques, to deciding which tools to use for testing, code analysis, the language to program software in, and even which compiler or IDE to use, software engineering becomes a task of great detail before any actual coding is performed. A look at some questions that may arise during development of a new platform are introduced. Considerations for design of the cognitive robotics platform are discussed. After which are a presentation of the architectural diagrams for competing architectures, followed by an outline of some of the features to be included within the platform. Documentation methodology and tools are briefly discussed. Finishing up the article is a section on testing and choosing testing tools.