SysML-based Analysis of Service Robot Software Development

-General-purpose systems modeling domain-

M.A. ABDUL RAHMAN*, Akira YASUDA and Makoto MIZUKAWA**

*Malaysia-Japan International Institute of Technology, UTM, [email protected]

**Graduate School of Engineering, Shibaura Institute of Technology, [email protected]

A growth number of applications have been promoted for service robots to coexist in a human society. A service
robot is a complex embedded system that includes a wide variety of technical components (i.e, software and
hardware) to be embedded systematically. This paper describes our study on development processes where we
analyzed some parts of the robot systems by adopting general-purpose system modeling language (SysML). In this
way, we contribute to developing service robot software with SysML notations in a systematic way. In our study, the
SysML notation conforms to SysML 1.2 and the Rational Rhapsody tool is used. Results from the analysis are
presented.

Key Words: Service robot system, Model-based approach analysis, SysML.

1. Introduction hardware components which are closely interacting. One of

the most important paradigm shifts that occur in engineering
Currently, robot technology is facing a new transition phase system design and development may be the adoption of
from manufacturing sites to domestics in order to provide common system models, as a foundation of system design. In
physical assistance and useful service especially to the fact, this will allow for a much more effective solution for
elderly and physically unfortunate people. However, early development process since a system can be analyzed and
works have indicated that established industrial robotics tested in all stages of design.
techniques are simply not adequate for directly transfer into
the world of domestic robots without extensively revising Moreover, this approach may enhance communications
some existing approaches. among developers and designers since model-based
development needs multi-disciplinary competence. An
Conventional robot technology is insufficient for new service aspect-oriented system model perhaps can carry all
robot applications unless user preference is given top design information about the system under development, and be the
priority [1]. Past development efforts of service robot system blueprint that all designers work towards [4].
using model-driven development methodology seem
inadequate to support the demands of current 3. Related Work
industrial-to-domestic robot transitions. The motivation of
this paper is to highlight the necessity of model-driven At present, no specific standard is used for designing robotic
architecture (MDA) approach for service robot development, systems and very limited researches have been found using a
with emphasis on the user needs and services to be added in domain specific modeling language for systems engineering,
the existing service robot applications. For MDA definition SysML [5].
and SysML background, one can refer to [2] and [3],
respectively. Minseong et al. [6] developed an intelligent service
robot,T-Rot based on the software-centric constructs,Unified
The remaining part of the paper is organized as follows. Modeling language,UML. Their work has motivated us to
Section 2 describes purpose of this research with emphasizes apply SysML formalisms rather than UML notations in
on the necessity of model-driven architecture for robot designing service robot systems. They focused on developing
development. Section 3 highlights some related works done navigation systems for service robot applications.
by several researchers in the past. Section 4 illustrates how to
apply the MDA approach into developing and analyzing the Takasu et al. [7] promoted the design of basic specifications
system for service robot, and discusses the results of of intelligent mobile robot that adopts model-based
simulations. Finally, Section 5 concludes the paper with technology to overcome some difficulties for robot
some words on future works. development. In addition, SysML notations have been
applied throughout their development processes and features
2. Purpose such as platform independent model, modules reusability,
and customizable system configuration have been
The idea of this research is to develop service robot systems discussed. We refer extensively both [6] and [7] researches
looking from systems engineering concepts. Most robotic by describing (a) the necessity of MDA approach to
systems are complex system consisting of both software and developing service robot software systems that provides a set
of guidelines to structure the specifications of software The proposed robot system (i.e. navigation control system)
design which are expressed as models. (b) this approach to should provide to include navigation strategies such as path
model system functionality using a platform-independent planning, localization and mapping, and collision avoidance
model (PIM) with an approriate domain-specific language. test cases. In the same time, both sensor and actuator
At this level of abstraction, the models describe important modules should be activated to fulfill the functional
characteristics of the domain in term of classes and their requirements.
attributes but do not describe any platform-specific choices
about which technologies will be adapted to represent them. 4.3 Structure Modeling

4. Approach The purpose of structure modeling is to understand the

interface between the system and the external environment as
At the early stage of development, we focus on the adoption well as to describe the structure of the proposed system under
of the MDA approach to model system functionality using a development by introducing block definition diagrams
platform-independent model (PIM) that is independent of the (BDDs).
specific technological used to implement it. In this paper, the
SysML notation conforms to SysML v.1.2 and the IBM Fig.2 shows the high-level architecture of robot systems
Rational Rhapsody v.7.5.2 tool is used. which illustrates the parts of a block to which the system has
to interface. Each part has its own attributes and operations.
4.1 Platform Independent Model (PIM) In the system, a user selects a function via user interface
A PIM is used by software developers to describe the device, to which the robot should perform. The system uses
software solution at a high level, independent of solution’s sensor data allocated from a sensor part (i.e. laser scanners,
deployment platform. This high-level definition of the infrared scanner, ultrasonic sensors, etc.) and it controls the
solutions can then be translated into multiple wheel actuators when activated. Therefore, the activation of
platform-specific models (PSMs) which are not covered in each part of the blocks corresponds to functional
this paper. requirements should be taken care of. This process is
important because internal parts may become complex and
4.2 Requirement Modeling prone to errors or malfunctions.
The first phase in software development is identifying the
functional requirements of the system, which defines what To structure the proposed system in details, we consider the
the system should provide for the user. In our approach, we internal block diagram (IBD) that shows how the parts of the
identify the functional requirements in terms of use cases and robot navigation system block from Fig.2 are decomposed
actors (see Fig.1). The actor can be humans or other entities (see Fig.3). The diagram shows the interfaces between the
that interacts externally to the system. We identified a navigation controller, the sensor interface, and the actuator
User/Human as an actor who should satisfy the identified interface. The navigation controller is known as a
precondition requirement. state-dependent control block that controls the sensors and
actuators. The states of the navigation controller block are
shown later in the behavior modeling. In the system, there
are three entity blocks identified, that is, a current position,
navigation path, navigation map, which are blocks that store
information.

Fig. 1 Use case scenario for robot navigation system

Fig. 2 SysML’s BDD of the high-level system architecture

 Our robot systems include the Navigation Controller
state-dependent
dependent block, and we develop a navigation
controller active state machine (see Fig.5)
Fig.5), which is executed
by the Navigation Controller part. t. The state machine needs
to be considered in connection with the sequence diagram
and it is required to take into account the messages that are
received and sent by the control block, which executes the
state machine.

Fig.5 shows the states of robot navigation

igation system and the
events that can trigger a transition between the states. When
the User Interface Device receives a function sel
selected by the
User, it starts in the User-interface Portable Device active
state. The Destination Request event triggers a transition to
Fig.3 SysML’s IBD of the proposed system the Navigation Controller active state. While in the
Navigation Controller active state, the controller performs
The obstacle avoidance timer, OATimer is activated by a both the Setup Sensor and the Setup Actuator states
timer event to periodically check for any obstacle around the simultaneously within 1000 milliseconds. A Confirm event
robot. triggers the transition back to the User
User- interface Portable
Device active state. The User will be informed via user
4.4 Behavior Modeling portable device so that the robot system is ready to perform
next service.
Next, we model the use case scenario using SysML’s
sequence and state machine diagrams. Sequence diagram
represents behavior of a sequence of messages exchanged
between parts while state machine diagram represents
behavior of an entity in terms of its transitions between states
triggered by events [8].

In our case, the event sequencing logic is specified to t

describe how the task responds to each of its message or
event inputs. The behavior of the use case in Fig.1 is
represented by the sequence diagram in Fig.4 for
understanding and readability. The SysML sequence diagram
specifies the interaction between the User,User the User
-interface Portable Device, the Robot navigation System,
System the
sensors, and the Wheel Actuators blocks as indicated by the
names at the top of the lifelines. Time proceeds vertically
down the diagram.
Fig.5 State machine models

Fig.4 The event sequencing logic diagram

 5. Simulation,, Conclusion, and Future Work

5.1 Simulation Models

This section
n provides a visualization of models through
simulation where we successfully created the
technology-independent model concept with the SysML. Our
robot system model is simulated on the Rational Rhapsody
Developer environment.

The objectives of simulating the system model are (1) to

ensure whether the model meets the requirements
ments and find
defects early in the modeling process.. (2) to iterativel
iteratively
perform model-level debugging for bug-freefree conditions. (3)
to ensure every part of the blocks is properly linked and
correlated as well as activating each
h component in the system
model when event is injected.

We compiled the simulation for debugging process, once this

is completed; we let the Rhapsody execute the model and
observe the output.. The output of the simulated model
mod is the
animation of the sequence diagram (see Fig.6)) as we execute
the application. In this sequence diagram, we can see the
environment (system border), the user,, the user-interface
portable device block, the robot navigation system block,
block the
sensor block, and the wheel actuator block, which represents
the whole systems model. The result shows how the whole
system is successfully activated and being prepared to be
integrated with a PSM model.

5.2 Conclusion and Future Work

In this paper, we have presented the necessity of

model-driven architecture (MDA) approach for service robot
development using a domain specific modeling language for
system engineering, SysML. We adopted a Fig.6 The simulated sequence diagram
platform-independent
independent model (PIM) concept to analyze
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