An Autonomous Robotic Table for Domestic Environments

Two main trends are emerging in the area of home and service robotics. The classical one aims at the development of a single skilled servant robot, able to perform complex tasks in a passive environment. The second, more recent trend aims at the achievement of domestic tasks through the cooperation of a network of simpler robotic devices pervasively embedded in the environment. This paper contributes to the latter trend by describing the PEIS Table, a robotic table that can be embedded in a domestic environment and perform autonomous navigation tasks. The PEIS Table can operate alone, or it can be part of a smart robotic environment, based on the concept of PEIS Ecology, and cooperate with other devices to perform more complex tasks. The hardware construction and navigation software of the PEIS Table are guided by a set of requirements for robotic domestic furniture. Interestingly, these are not the same as the requirements usually considered for service robots.