‘Robot-Cloud’: A framework to assist heterogeneous low cost robots

This paper gives a framework to offer assistance to low cost ROS (Robot Operating System) supported heterogeneous robots in a large environment through cloud. To build such a system `Robot-Cloud´ is prepared which extends the functionality of a robot. A `Robot-Cloud´ is designed and implemented with components like cloud controller, ROS master node, storage unit, Map-reduce computing cluster and robotic services. In this system every robot is facilitated with ROS capability that helps to provide abstraction over hardware, heterogeneity and communication over TCP/IP. All the robots communicate with a master node present at the cloud controller to avail communication with other robots and to request services from the cloud. Our system supports all three basic service models i.e. Saas, PaaS and IaaS by incorporating typical SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) functionality. This approach can also be utilized to achieve a common goal for the networked robots. Finally, some simulation results are given to support the claimed framework.