A mixed real-time robot hardware abstraction layer (R-HAL)

The rapid advances in robotics have recently led to the developments of a wide range of robotic platforms that exhibit significant differences at the hardware components level. Consequently, this poses a significant challenge to robot software developers since they have to know how every hardware device in the robot works to ensure their software’s compatibility when transferring/reusing their code on different robots. In this paper we present a new Robot Hardware Abstraction Layer (R-HAL) that permits to seamlessly program and control any robotic platform powered by the XBot control software framework. The implementation details of the R-HAL are introduced. The R-HAL is extensively validated through simulation trials and experiments with a wide range of dissimilar robotic platforms, among them the COMAN and WALK-MAN humanoids, the KUKA LWR and the CENTAURO upper body. The results attained demonstrate in practice the gained benefits in terms of code compatibility, reuse and portability, and finally unified application programming even for robots with significantly diverse hardware.