A Hardware Accelerated Robot Middleware Package for Intelligent Processing on Robots

Service robots require implementation of intelligent processing, e.g., image processing. However, the computational resources of standard PCs typically used in service robots are not sufficient for such processes. Furthermore, robot middleware is widely used in many robots because such systems facilitate integration and are suitable for rapid prototyping. We propose a "connective object for middleware to accelerator (COMTA)," which is a processing system that uses hardware accelerators, i.e., field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and robot middleware. Users can access the FPGAs in the proposed system via middleware interfaces; thus, complex internal circuits are not required. For human tracking using image processing, the proposed system can automatically generate from a single configuration file. The proposed system performs 3.3 times more efficiently relative to computation than standard PCs in robots.