POLITECNICODI TORINO

Dipartimento di

Automatica e Informatica

PhD in Computer and Control EngineeringAdvisor

cycle

PhD Candidate:

1. IntroductionCloud Robotics is a new research field in robotics.

It was first introduced in 2010, and it aims atleveraging internet based technologies to open newpossibilities in the development of service roboticsapplications. Thanks to the cloud, robots can offloadpart of their computation and storage resourcesremotely, or can share their knowledge andcollaborate with other robots to perform tasks. CloudRobotics takes strong advantages from the opensource community: an important step in thisdirection has been done by the Robot OperatingSystem (ROS), that is an open source frameworkdesigned to encourage collaboratively developmentof service robotics applications.2. ObjectivesCloud Robotics aims at pushing the development

of robotics applications to a new level of complexity,and it is a perfect technology to solve common issuesin service robotics. However, the cloud introducesnew open issues in real applications.This work focuses on the design of general

frameworks that enable the development of servicerobotics applications resorting on the cloud roboticsparadigm. In details, it aims at analyzing commonissues that appear in the development of cloudrobotics applications and proposing frameworks tosolve them. The main contributions of this work areintroduced and discussed in Section 3, and have beenapplied in order to prototype working cloud roboticsapplications, presented in Section 4.3. Technologies

3.1 Cloud Manager. Cloud Robotics developersneed an infrastructure to deploy and run theirapplications, that is guaranteed by several availableprojects, such as the TIM Cloud Robotics Platform,which provides computational and storage resourceson demand. However, it is important to providesome developing tools to enable fast prototyping ofcloud robotics applications, especially when thedevelopers have to deal with multiples machines.The Cloud Robotics Manager has been designed tobe a powerful tool to develop robotic applications.The general architecture of the manager is depictedin Fig. 1. The cloud manager exposes a web GraphicUser Interface (GUI) which enables entirely thedeployment of a cloud robotics applications. Thanksto the Cloud Interface (CI) component, each machineinvolved in the application can be remotelyconfigured: developers can configure machines (suchas connectivity configuration, name, etc.), install, run,stop, compile and deploy ROS libraries and nodes. Inaddition, it enables the development of web GUIsthat communicate with ROS thanks to Rosbridge.

3.2 Virtual Sensor Networks. Sensor Networks(SNs) are a common application of IoT in Industry4.0. They resort on a sparse set of sensors to collectlocalized measurements from the environment.

Ludovico Orlando Russo

Leveraging the Cloud to develop Service Robotics Applications

Basilio Bona

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We propose the Virtual Sensor Networks (VSNs)approach, i.e., a novel alternative to SNs that relieson autonomous robots equipped with environmentalsensors to solve the same task. We propose a newarchitecture (see Fig. 2) that enables the developmentof a VSN resorting on a cloud robotics platform. It iscomposed of 4 layers: the Hardware Layer groupssensors and actuators; the Navigation Layerguarantees autonomous navigation of the mobilebase; the Sensing Layer groups preprocessingalgorithm to apply to the raw data from sensorsbefore storing them; the Application Layer enables theapplication itself resorting on the navigation andsensing layer, and exposes a web GUI to enable theuser to access the collected data and configure thesystem. With respect to SNs, this system is simpler toconfigure, elastic and does not require physicalintervention on the environment; on the other hand,it does not guarantee time dense measurements.

3.3 Telepresence with Natural Interfaces.Telepresence is an emerging application of CloudRobotics: it enables a user to physically interact witha remote environment. Telepresence pushed thedevelopment of Natural Interfaces (NIs), i.e.,intuitive Human/Computer Interfaces. NIs require ahuge amount of computation resources and theaccess to a huge trained database to perform complexComputer Vision algorithms which process rawinput data. We propose to offload the inputprocessing capability to the cloud, according to thearchitecture depicted in Fig. 3.

4. Applications4.1 Robot@CED. Thermal management is critical

in data centers, Robot@CED [1] aims at developing arobot-based environmental monitoring system aimedat supporting managers to detect and solveanomalies in the server rooms. We developed a VSNto solve this goal. The hardware layer is equippedwith a temperature/humidity probe and a thermalcamera. The robot continuously inspects precisepoints (goals) in the map and storetemperature/humidity measurements and thermalimages. The system has been tested in one room ofthe data center of Politecnico di Torino (see Fig. 4).

4.2 PARLOMA. PARLOMA [2,3] aims atdeveloping a communication system for deafblindpeople, who communicate resorting on tactile SignLanguages (tSLs). Due to the needs to have a tactileoutput device, we developed an Open Sourcebioinspired robot hand controlled remotely from aNI device that is able to perform hand tracker on thesigner. In this way, the “listener”, is able tounderstand the message sent by the signer. Someexperiments on the system are depicted in Fig. 5.

4.3 DotBot. Didactic robotics is a powerful tool tohelp scientific teachers to enthuse students andtransfer information easily. We believe that CloudRobotics can open new possibilities for students andteachers. DotBot is an Open Source robot connectedto a cloud robotics platform that can be programmedand configured remotely thanks to the cloudmanager presented in Section 3.1. The system isactually used by several Italian schools.5. ConclusionsIn this work, we explored novel possibility in the

field of service robotics powered by a cloudinfrastructure. The designed frameworks have beenapplied to working applications in real casescenarios; however, there are still some issues areopen and need investigation, such as IT security.6. Relevant Publications[1] Russo, Ludovico Orlando; Rosa, Stefano; Maggiora, Marcello;Bona, Basilio (2016) A Novel Cloud-Based Service RoboticsApplication to Data Center Environmental Monitoring. In:SENSORS, vol. 16 n. 8, 1255 ISSN 1424-8220[2] Russo L.O.; Airò Farulla G.; Pianu D.; Salgarella A.R.; ControzziM.; Cipriani C.; Oddo C.M.; Geraci C.; Rosa S.; Indaco M. (2015)PARLOMA - A Novel Human-Robot Interaction System for Deaf-blind Remote Communication. In: INTERNATIONAL JOURNALOF ADVANCED ROBOTIC SYSTEMS, vol. 12 n. 57, pp. 1-13. -ISSN 1729-8806[3] Bulgarelli, Andrea; Toscana, Giorgio; Russo, Ludovico Orlando;Farulla, Giuseppe Airo; Indaco, Marco; Bona, Basilio (2016) A Low-cost Open Source 3D-Printable Dexterous AnthropomorphicRobotic Hand with a Parallel Spherical Joint Wrist for SignLanguages Reproduction. In: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OFADVANCED ROBOTIC SYSTEMS

7. AcknowledgementsThis work has been fully funded by TIM. I would

like to thanks Eng. Marco Gaspardone, head of theJOL CRAB of TIM, for its support in these years.

Figure1:CloudManagerArchitecture

Figure2:VirtualSensorNetworks

Figure3:TelepresencewithNI

HotSpots

Figure4:Robot@CEDCollectedData

Asus XTion RGB-D Camera

Signer performinghandshapes (F)

Remote Communication Receiver Touching

the Hand

Figure5:PARLOMA