A prototype-based skill model for specifying robotic assembly tasks

Abstract

In recent years, a number of publications described approaches for model-based manipulation skills and their applicability to a variety of robot tasks - be it assembly, industrial robotics in general, or service robotics. These approaches roughly follow the same pattern: They model robot task description based on the Task Frame Formalism, the Task Function Approach, or iTaSC. They model coordination mechanisms in form of statecharts or Petri nets. And almost all models are accompanied by domain-specific languages (DSLs) that facilitate creating applications based on those models. While one advantage of using models is their reusability across applications, how to explicitly model the reuse itself has not been fully addressed by these publications. Our paper contributes to this field of research by investigating how reuse can be explicitly modeled using prototype-based inheritance. We base our model on iTaSC and provide a simple yet effective DSL for populating the model and creating applications. We demonstrate our approach by creating a comprehensive library of skills, and by showing the use, reuse and incremental refinement of skills for diverse industrial assembly applications.