An information model for modular robots: the Hardware Robot Information Model

Today's landscape of robotics is dominated by vertical integration where single vendors develop the final product leading to slow progress, expensive products and customer lock-in. Opposite to this, an horizontal integration would result in a rapid development of cost-effective mass-market products with an additional consumer empowerment. The transition of an industry from vertical integration to horizontal integration is typically catalysed by de facto industry standards that enable a simplified and seamless integration of products. However, in robotics there is currently no leading candidate for a global plug-and-play standard. This paper tackles the problem of incompatibility between robot components that hinder the reconfigurability and flexibility demanded by the robotics industry. Particularly, it presents a model to create plug-and-play robot hardware components. Rather than iteratively evolving previous ontologies, our proposed model answers the needs identified by the industry while facilitating interoperability, measurability and comparability of robotics technology. Our approach differs significantly with the ones presented before as it is hardware-oriented and establishes a clear set of actions towards the integration of this model in real environments and with real manufacturers.