Software Product Line Engineering for Robotics

The cost of creating new robotics products is significantly related to the complexity of developing robotic software applications that are flexible enough to easily accommodate frequently changing requirements. In various application domains, software product line (SPL) development has proven to be the most effective approach to achieving software flexibility and to face this kind of challenges. This chapter reviews the fundamental concepts in SPL from a robotics perspective and defines guidelines for the adoption of software product line engineering in robotics. In particular, it discusses the concepts of software variability, domain analysis and modelling, reference architectures, and system configuration.