Semantic Plug and Play - Self-Descriptive Modular Hardware for Robotic Applications

This paper describes the use of semantically annotated data for the expression of sensors and actuators with their properties and capabilities. For this purpose, a plug and play mechanism is presented in order to exchange self-descriptions between several hardware devices and then use the established information for the execution of capabilities. For the combination of different capabilities distributed on multiple hardware devices an architecture is presented to link abstract capabilities. These abstract capabilities are initialized through concrete capabilities of the discovered hardware devices by the plug and play mechanism.