An IEEE standard Ontology for Robotics and Automation

This article discusses a newly formed IEEE-RAS working group entitled Ontologies for Robotics and Automation (ORA). The goal of this working group is to develop a standard ontology and associated methodology for knowledge representation and reasoning in robotics and automation, together with the representation of concepts in an initial set of application domains. The standard provides a unified way of representing knowledge and provides a common set of terms and definitions, allowing for unambiguous knowledge transfer among any group of humans, robots, and other artificial systems. In addition to describing the goal and structure of the group, this article gives some examples of how the ontology, once developed, can be used by applications such as industrial kitting.