Noriaki Ando, Shinji Kurihara, Geoffrey Biggs, Takeshi Sakamoto, Hiroyuki Nakamoto, and Tetsuo Kotoku

Abstract:
In component-based Robotic Technology (RT) systems, launching the system involves installing component binary files to the target computers, instantiation of components, and establishing connections between components. In order to operate RT systems with many CPU nodes effectively, the deployment features provided by the middleware are important. Deployment means system life-cycle management, including software installation, configuring components, and launching components. In this paper, we describe deployment tools for RT systems. The component deployment functionality is realized based on the OMG Robotic Technology Component (RTC) specification [1]. Description formats are defined, a service interface is designed and tools are implemented using the OpenRTM-aist that is the implementation of the OMG RTC specification. The implemented deployment infrastructure is evaluated and discussed, and issues and potential future work are considered.

Keywords: software deployment, software platform, distributed systems, RT-middleware, RT-component