XBot: A Cross-Robot Software Framework for Real-Time Control

Abstract

The widespread use of robotics in new application domains outside the industrial workplace settings requires robotic systems which demonstrate functionalities far beyond that of classical industrial robotic machines. The implementation of these capabilities inevitably increases the complexity of the robotic hardware, control a and software components. This chapter introduces the XBot software architecture for robotics, which is capable of Real-Time (RT) performance with minimum jitter at relatively high control frequency while demonstrating enhanced flexibility and abstraction features making it suitable for the control of robotic systems of diverse hardware embodiment and complexity. A key feature of the XBot is its cross-robot compatibility, which makes possible the use of the framework on different robots, without code modifications, based only on a set of configuration files. The design of the framework ensures easy interoperability and built-in integration with other existing software tools for robotics, such as ROS, YARP or OROCOS, thanks to a robot agnostic API called XBotInterface. The framework has been successfully used and validated as a software infrastructure for collaborative robotic arms as KUKA lbr iiwa/lwr 4+ and Franka Emika Panda, other than humanoid robots such as WALK-MAN and COMAN+, and quadruped centaur-like robots as CENTAURO.