Mining guidelines for architecting robotics software

Ivano Malavolta

doi:10.1016/j.jss.2021.110969

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Mining guidelines for architecting robotics software

2021-08-01

DOI：10.1016/j.jss.2021.110969

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Abstract

En 中文

Context: The Robot Operating System (ROS) is the de-facto standard for robotics software. However, ROS-based systems are getting larger and more complex and could benefit from good software architecture practices. Goal: We aim at (i) unveiling the state-of-the-practice in terms of targeted quality attributes and architecture documentation in ROS-based systems, and (ii) providing empirically-grounded guidance to roboticists about how to properly architect ROS-based systems. Methods: We designed and conducted an observational study where we (i) built a dataset of 335 GitHub repositories containing real open-source ROS-based systems, and (ii) mined the repositories to extract and synthesize quantitative and qualitative findings about how roboticists are architecting ROS-based systems. Results: First, we extracted an empirically-grounded overview of the state of the practice for architecting and documenting ROS-based systems. Second, we synthesized a catalog of 47 architecting guidelines for ROS-based systems. Third, the extracted guidelines were validated by 119 roboticists working on real-world open-source ROS-based systems. Conclusion: Roboticists can use our architecting guidelines for applying good design principles to develop robots that meet quality requirements, and researchers can use our results as evidence-based indications about how real-world ROS systems are architected today, thus inspiring future research contributions. (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc.

Keywords:

Software architecture

Robotics

ROS

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