Knowledge Centric Architecture for a Robot Swarm

We have built and tested a knowledge centric system for a robot swarm. Our implementation enhances iRobot Roomba cleaning robots with a tiny linux computer, RFID tag reader/writer and optionally a WIFI card. Robots use the RFID tags for object recognition and message passing. The knowledge architecture of the system is inspired by semantic web principles, spanning over several layers: RFID tags on objects, process interaction in a single robot via a main memory datastore and a rule system, central database for a swarm. The communication components of the system have been already ported to the larger Pioneer and Mugiro robots via the Player middleware. The paper presents our solutions to the knowledge management and communication problems stemming from the robotics issues and demonstrates feasibility of using the semantic web principles in the robotics domain.