Component based architecture for an intelligent mobile manipulator

We describe the development of an architecture for the DESIRE technology demonstrator based on principles of classical component based software engineering. The architecture is directly derived from the project requirements and resides on the concept of an Autonomous Component utilizing a smart feedback value called WishLists. This return type is able to provide expert advice about the reasons of occurring failures and give hints for possible recovery strategies. This is of key importance to advance towards robustness. The integration of an AI task planner allows the realization of higher flexibility, dependability and capability during task execution and may resolve conflicts between occurringWishLists. Furthermore the necessity of a central system-state model (Eigenmodel), which represe nts the current state and configuration of the whole system at runtime, is explained and illustrated. We conclude with some lessons learned.