Human-robot interface using agents communicating in an XML-based markup language

The paper concerns an agent-based human-robot interface via the Internet. A user client and an embedded software are viewed as agents with limited computational and communication resources. To facilitate the communication between the real-time embedded agents and the user interface agents via the communication channel of uncertain quality the proxy agent is proposed as a mediator. The functions assigned to the proxy agent target reduction of inter-agent communication load and minimization of computational resources taken by the embedded agents and user interface agents for communication-related tasks. An XML-based language, RoboML, is designed to serve as a common language for robot programming, agent communication and knowledge representation. The human-robot interface software prototype is developed for an autonomous guided vehicle to evaluate the proposed techniques.