X10ABOT: The extensible, scalable and modular robotics kit architecture

We present the architecture and design of a general purpose robotics development kit, called X10ABOT, which aims to facilitate the rapid development of robotic solutions to a wide variety of problems. Robotics kits of this sort are usually aimed at casual hobbyists and children, and as a result, usually have severe limitations in the number of sensors and actuators that they can manage. In contrast, X10ABOT is: modular (new functionality is added through standard daughter boards), scalable (up to 16 sensors and actuators on each of up to 112 hardware modules), and extensible (module software can be upgraded to support new types of sensors and actuators). We have also designed a generic port, capable of handling several types of sensors; and we have done similarly for the actuators. The system is still under active development, but we present preliminary results to show how the system would allow its user to readily add extra actuators to a creation, with minimal configuration information required, and relatively little impact on the preexisting user code.