Towards a ROS-based autonomous cloud robotics platform for data center monitoring

Data center monitoring has been a critical subject of research in recent years. In this paper we present a robotic system, based on the Robot Operating System (ROS), in which a mobile robot equipped with a laser range sensor and an Inertial Motion Unit (IMU) is able to autonomously navigate in a data center room for accurate monitoring of critical measurements, such as servers' external temperature, humidity and other physical quantities. The robot is able to autonomously create a map of a previously unknown room, localize therein and execute a list of measurements at different locations, which are provided by the user via a web Graphical User Interface (GUI). The application is based on a cloud robotics infrastructure which encloses the ROS nodes and exposes REST APIs to the user. We discuss our implementation choices with regards to the particular requirements of the scenario, both in terms of robot navigation and software infrastructure, and present some preliminary results in a real scenario.