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To achieve multipotent ensembles, we also integrate reconfigurable and self-descriptive hardware (i.e., sensors and actuators) in this architecture, which can be freely combined to change the capabilities of robots at runtime. When many of these robots work together, we call the structure of this cooperation an ensemble. We introduce the class of robot systems implementing this architecture as multipotent systems that bring together the benefits of both system classes, enabling homogeneously designed robots to become heterogeneous specialists at runtime. In this paper, we present our approach to filling this gap by introducing a reference architecture for mobile robots that defines the interplay of all necessary technologies for achieving this goal. Up to now, there has been no known approach aiming to unify the benefits of both these types of system. While homogeneously configured systems are known to be robust against failures through redundancy but are highly specialized for specific use cases, heterogeneously designed systems can be used for a broad range of applications but suffer from their specialization, i.e., they can only hardly compensate for the failure of one specialist. Concerning this design, robots of one system compared to each other can be classified to exclusively be either homogeneous or heterogeneous, both resulting in different system properties.
#Robo 3t no unix socket support on windows software#
Depending on the respective application, the hardware design and accompanying software of mobile robots are of various forms, especially for integrating different sensors and actuators. Their capabilities can be used, e.g., to transport workpieces in industrial applications or to support operational forces in search and rescue scenarios, among many others. Mobile multirobot systems play an increasing role in many disciplines.
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