A framework for a web-based supervisory control of mobile robots - Application to an assistance system for disabled persons

This article depicts the architecture of a framework for an assistance and service system used to control a team of mobile robots. The system aims at giving to a disabled person the ability to describe missions that the robots will have to execute in the flat. The framework includes an intuitive Human-Machine Interface which uses a WWW navigator. This interface separates the User Interface that allows the description and the launching of the missions and the Administrator Interface that is charged with the setup and the tests in the environment where the system will be installed. The mobile robots are endowed with the capacities needed by the collision avoidance behaviours but their low computational level does not allow them to embed all the behaviours requested by the missions they have to perform. Part of these behaviours stands on a workstation on which runs a multi-agent system. The decentralised architecture is based on a multiserver structure connected to the networtk and communicating by means of HTTP requests allowing a full access to and from Internet. Nevertheless, the robots are not able to execute autonomously all kinds of missions and, therefore, the disabled person will be necessarily involved in the system.