A Method of Constructing Robotics Service Platform for Assisting Handicapped or Elderly People

In order to solve the problem of demand for large capacity storage and high-performance computing resource of intelligent robot navigation and demand-service matching in the field of assisting handicapped or elderly people, overcoming the limitations of carrying resources, the method of constructing robot service platform for assisting handicapped or elderly people (RSP-AHEP) was proposed based on cloud robotics technology. Firstly, the demand of assisting handicapped or elderly people and the corresponding robot service category was analyzed to assure relationship-matching subjects. Secondly, based on VMware and Hadoop cluster technology, the architecture of a three-layer robot service platform was designed, which were universal interface layer, resource service layer, and application layer. Complex computing tasks, such as the matching computing between robot service and demand of the handicapped or elderly people, and the robot path-planning service, were placed in the robot service platform with the advantages of storage and computing resources. Thirdly, the remote communication between the robot and the service platform was realized based on the ROS (Robot Operation System) technology; finally, the function experiments, which included the remote dispatch, path planning, and service response between the service platform and robot, were carried out in the simulation environment. The result verified the feasibility of the proposed method.