There is a growing interest in applying intelligent technologies to assistant robots. These robots should have a number of characteristics such as autonomy, easy reconfiguration, robust perception systems and they should be oriented towards close interaction with humans. In this paper we present an automatic hotel assistant system based on a series of mobile platforms that interact with guests and service personnel to help them in different tasks. These tasks include bringing small items to customers, showing them different points of interest in the hotel, accompanying the guests to their rooms and providing them with general information. Each robot can also autonomously handle some daily scheduled tasks. Apart from user-initiated and scheduled tasks, the robots can also perform tasks based on events triggered by the building's automation system (BAS). The robots and the BAS are connected to a central server via a local area network. The system was developed with the Robotics Integrated Development Environment (RIDE) and was tested intensively in different environments.

There is a growing interest in the use of tour guide mobile robots in different environments such as museums, exhibitions and fairs. This type of robot should have autonomy, robust perception and navigation systems, and should also be oriented towards close interaction with humans. In this paper we present an automatic tour guide system based on a set of mobile platforms that interact with visitors to help them in different tasks. These tasks include giving tours to visitors, helping them find points of interest in a building and providing information about elements in the stands in a fair. Over the last few years, many tour guide robots have been developed and used in museums and at events. Most of these systems are based on a single robot and they do not include mechanisms to exchange information with the building automation system. The approach presented here uses several robots connected to a central server. The system also includes different devices in the building that are connected through a fieldbus to the central server. The system was developed with the Robotics Integrated Development Environment (RIDE) and was tested intensively at different events.

In this article, we present a CAN-based (Controller Area Network) distributed system to integrate sensors, actuators and hardware controllers in a mobile robot platform. With this work, we provide a robust, simple, flexible and open system to make hardware elements or subsystems communicate, that can be applied to different robots or mobile platforms. Hardware modules can be connected to or disconnected from the CAN bus while the system is working. It has been tested in our mobile robot Rato, based on a RWI (Real World Interface) mobile platform, to replace the old sensor and motor controllers. It has also been used in the design of two new robots: BellBot and WatchBot. Currently, our hardware integration architecture supports different sensors, actuators and control subsystems, such as motor controllers and inertial measurement units. The integration architecture was tested and compared with other solutions through a performance analysis of relevant parameters such as transmission efficiency and bandwidth usage. The results conclude that the proposed solution implements a lightweight communication protocol for mobile robot applications that avoids transmission delays and overhead.

In the last few years, the amount of money spent on security has grown due to a number of factors. The surveillance system of buildings has particularly become an important issue to human daily life. This paper describes the development of a Multirobot system for building surveillance applications monitored through Internet. Each robot can handle some daily surveillance routine tasks. Sensor information such as real-time images captured by a camera on the robot with pan/tilt/zoom functions can be transmitted back to the central management office via a local area network. Teleoperation of the robots via the Internet or intranet is also possible. The complete system can be installed and reprogrammed in a very short time thanks to a high level task application programming environment named RoboGraph. Using this tool the application can be programmed using Petri nets with commands and events previously defined.