Testbeds for ubiquitous robotics: A survey

•Surveys ubiquitous robotics systems comprising multirobot systems and sensor networks.•Proposes a taxonomy based on heterogeneity and interoperability among technologies.•Features analyzed include heterogeneity, generality, flexibility, and usability.•Identifies trends and gaps, proposing guidelines for researchers and developers.

The growing interest in ubiquitous robotics has originated in the last years the development of a high variety of testbeds. This paper presents a survey on existing ubiquitous robotics testbeds comprising networked mobile robots and networks of distributed sensors, cameras and smartphones, among others. The survey provides an insight into the testbed design, internal behavior and use, identifying trends and existing gaps and proposing guidelines for testbed developers. The level of interoperability among different ubiquitous robotics technologies is used as the main conducting criterion of the survey. Other features analyzed include testbed architectures, target experiments and usability tools.