Networked robot systems for indoor service enhanced via ROS middleware

Service robots are playing more and more roles for indoor environments and for a service robot with limited equipment and capacity, it is an effective way to empower itself so as to better serve people or function via seeking help from surrounding resources as ambient intelligence or people. With open source program Robot Operating System (ROS) well developed for localization, navigation, communication, even some service operation tasks and as an accepted design approach, a new system mechanism, design and implementation are presented in this paper which employs ROS middleware for system enhancement and extension, instead of conventional complex distributed computing or WEB Service nodes. A networked robot works semi-autonomously under supervisory control of people through an Internet Browser while served by ambient intelligent assistant nodes to empower its functions. Smart device nodes and supervisory system of the robot is designed with ROS middleware and typical distributed resources node for video/audio under non-ROS system as with Android for ROSBridge communication are given in detail. Lastly, typical application scenarios and experiments are given for validation of the experimental system's design and feasibility.