Dealing with configurability in robot systems

In this concept paper the notion of the configurations and configurability is interpreted in the context of robotic and automation systems. A review is given on related methods and techniques, and how configurations relate to system and software life cycles. The modeling principles for configuration based design are outlined and a proposal is made for the design process based on systems and software product line principles, including a completely new way to reuse system model data by storing them as semantic descriptions in SW delivery packages, to be queried by system designers. A tentative design example is presented.