Today's landscape of robotics is dominated by vertical integration where single vendors develop the final product leading to slow progress, expensive products and customer lock-in. Opposite to this, an horizontal integration would result in a rapid development of cost-effective mass-market products with an additional consumer empowerment. The transition of an industry from vertical integration to horizontal integration is typically catalysed by de facto industry standards that enable a simplified and seamless integration of products. However, in robotics there is currently no leading candidate for a global plug-and-play standard.
This paper tackles the problem of incompatibility between robot components that hinder the reconfigurability and flexibility demanded by the robotics industry. Particularly, it presents a model to create plug-and-play robot hardware components. Rather than iteratively evolving previous ontologies, our proposed model answers the needs identified by the industry while facilitating interoperability, measurability and comparability of robotics technology. Our approach differs significantly with the ones presented before as it is hardware-oriented and establishes a clear set of actions towards the integration of this model in real environments and with real manufacturers.
Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island（罗德岛大学海洋研究生院）；Department of Ocean Engineering, University of Rhode Island（罗德岛大学海洋工程系）；Department of Mechanical, Industrial, and Systems Engineering, University of Rhode Island（罗德岛大学机械、工业与系统工程系）；Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology（史蒂文斯理工学院电气与计算机工程系）；Department of Marine Technology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology（挪威科学技术大学海洋技术系）
Teaching Autonomous Systems Hands-On: Leveraging Modular Small-Scale Hardware in the Robotics Classroom
University of Pennsylvania（宾夕法尼亚大学）；Technical University of Munich（慕尼黑工业大学）；Lehigh University（理海大学）；University of Texas Austin（德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校）；Poznan University of Technology（波兹南理工大学）；University of Virginia（弗吉尼亚大学）；Clemson University（克莱姆森大学）；Toyota Research Institute（丰田研究院）
COMB: Common Open Modular robotic platform for Bees
Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Konstanz（康斯坦茨大学计算机与信息科学系）；Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz（康斯坦茨大学集体行为高级研究中心）；Dahlem Center for Machine Learning and Robotics, Freie Universität Berlin（柏林自由大学达勒姆机器学习和机器人中心）
Designing and Validating a Self-Aligning Tool Changer for Modular Reconfigurable Manipulation Robots
Department of Systems Innovation, Graduate School of Engineering Science, The University of Osaka（大阪大学工学研究生院系统创新学科）；Industrial Cyber-physical Systems Research Center, The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)（国家先进工业科学与技术研究院工业协同物理系统研究中心）
MACARONS: A Modular and Open-Sourced Automation System for Vertical Farming
University of Lincoln（林肯大学）
模块化自动作物阵列在线系统（MACARONS）是一种可扩展、可升级的开放式硬件系统，用于自动园艺系统（如垂直农场）中的植物运输。它被指定为以100 mm/s的速度沿导轨移动高达1060 mm x 630 mm和12.5 kg的植物托盘，并以41.7 mm/s的速度沿电梯向上移动，例如在用于监控和驱动植物的站之间。一个MACARONS种植单位的建设成本为144.96美元，相当于128.85美元/平方米的种植面积。设计发布并符合CERN-OSH-W的要求，其中包括分步图形构建说明，并且可以由典型的技术人员在一天内构建，成本为1535.50美元。集成测试包含在构建说明中，用于验证规范，我们报告成功构建。通过一个简单的分析，我们证明了MACARONS可以以足以自动化托盘装载/卸载的速度运行，以降低垂直农场的劳动力成本。
Fast and Modular Whole-Body Lagrangian Dynamics of Legged Robots with Changing Morphology
Autonomous Space Robotics and Mechatronics Laboratory, Carleton University（自主空间机器人与机电实验室，卡尔顿大学）；Mechanical, Industrial, and Mechatronics Engineering Department, Toronto Metropolitan University（机械、工业与机电工程系，多伦多 Metropolitan 大学）
