What role does software play in the success of your robot's design?

Software plays a crucial role in the success of a robot's design by enabling precise control, advanced functionality, and adaptability. It allows for the integration of sensors and actuators, real-time data processing, autonomous decision-making, and seamless interaction with the environment. Effective software ensures reliability, efficiency, and scalability, significantly enhancing the robot's overall performance and user experience.

When it comes to robotics, we should consider the crucial needs of a real-time system. Some critical events and actions could happen momentarily so it is essential to recognize them in order to make a system more precise and safe. To achieve this, we need to use non-blocking code. Specially in motion. As an example, we can consider the encoder input to the controller while we are sending pulses to a servo. A blocking code could easily miss some of the signal coming from encoder while it is sending pulses to a servo motor. That could easily cause an error on precision movement. So, it is really essential to develop a optimized non-blocking program flow.

In order to measure the best optimized values from our sensors, firstly we need to consider that how many resolution for our process. Because more prescise measurings generally cause more calculations and that will has a negative effect when it comes to real-time systems. So, in order to achieve best optimal results, we should consider the needed precision, than we could use interrupts or a more optimized code to achieve the best possible result.

Sensory processing in a robot involves the software interpreting data from various sensors to understand and react to its environment. This includes: Data Acquisition: Gathering raw data from sensors such as cameras, LIDAR, ultrasonic sensors, and touch sensors. Data Filtering and Noise Reduction: Cleaning up the sensor data to remove any irrelevant or erroneous information. Feature Extraction: Identifying important characteristics or patterns within the sensor data, such as edges in a visual field or distance measurements. Sensor Fusion: Combining data from multiple sensors to create a more accurate and comprehensive understanding of the environment.

Decision-making software in a robot enables it to autonomously choose actions based on sensory input and predefined goals. It involves analyzing real-time data, assessing possible actions, predicting outcomes, and selecting the optimal response. Effective decision-making algorithms ensure the robot can adapt to dynamic environments, perform complex tasks, and achieve its objectives efficiently and reliably.

It is crucial to consider the all possible events in order to make our program to make the best possible decisions. Unrecognized events can cause our program to terminate, make faulty decisions or even cause a damage to robot itself or to the enviroment. The more considered events while developing simply makes our application more robust and safe. Also, it is always a good practice to be aware and take pre-cautions about the what if situations like what if one of the sensors get dirty and sends anormous signals.

The software helps us describe how our robots are meant to communicate. Regardless of the underlying technology, software is required to ensure that communication is robust, secure, and efficient. A poorly implemented communication stack can result in physical damage (or injuries) and substantial financial implications. Also, a lack of security hardening can cause a third party to intercept or spoof the communication, which can result in unexpected behaviour or data loss.

Communication between processor become more essential with IoT. With the help of that, we can build processes that work in a seemless harmony. Also it is essential when it comes to precision applications. In a real-time critical system, one microcontroller could just responsible for a specific task which is critical, and another processor could be responsible of another critical task to ensure to give the best performance available.

The software helps us interact with robots. As software engineering became fashionable, there was an outburst of new technologies and frameworks. Interfaces can be created using popular languages such as JavaScript or Python and can be used to communicate with the robots. On the other hand, this makes robotics more accessible, and more users can interact with machines without learning complex technologies. A good example would be how the university where I worked used Scratch and bespoke Arduino communication bridge to create an educational platform for students to grasp fundamental programming concepts. Without prior robotics or programming knowledge, they could program small robots to move around or even follow a line!

In addition to addressing bugs, documenting the changes made during software maintenance is crucial for future reference. Keeping detailed records of updates, fixes, and enhancements can facilitate a smoother troubleshooting process and provide valuable insights for future development iterations. Moreover, establishing a regular schedule for software maintenance tasks and conducting thorough testing after each update can help mitigate risks and ensure the robot's reliability in various operational scenarios. By prioritizing software maintenance as an integral part of your robot management strategy, you demonstrate a proactive approach to sustaining optimal performance and maximizing the value of your robotic system over time.

Continuous software maintenance is essential for the robot's longevity and performance, including updates, bug fixes, and improvements to ensure optimal functionality.

Software ensures robot safety and reliability by implementing safety protocols, emergency stop functions, fault detection, limit checking, collision avoidance, predictive maintenance, and compliance with safety standards. It monitors and controls robot behavior, prioritizes critical tasks, and secures against unauthorized access and cyber threats, maintaining consistent and safe operation.

It's important to consider scalability, security, and adaptability of the software to meet evolving needs and challenges in the design and operation of the robot.