Real-Time Service-Oriented Architectures: A Data-Centric Implementation for Distributed and Heterogeneous Robotic System

Abstract

Cyber-physical systems like networked robots have benefited from improvements in hardware processing power, and can facilitate modern component and service-based architectures that promote software reuse and bring higher-level functionality, improved integration capabilities, scalability and ease of development to the devices. However, these systems also have very specific requirements such as reliability, safety, and strict timeliness requirements set by the physical world, that must be addressed in the architecture. This paper proposes a real-time capable service-oriented architecture, based on data-centric middleware and an open real-time operating system. A prototype implementation for a robotic remote handling scenario is used to test the approach. The architecture is evaluated on the basis of how well it fulfils the expectations given for the service-orientation, including: reusability, evolvability, interoperability and real-time performance. In one sentence, the goal is to evaluate the benefits of a data-centric approach to service-orientation in a performance-critical and distributed system.