On Structuring Energy-aware Sequence-control Software

This paper presents a framework to structure sequence-control software that accounts for the communication of energy information by design when interfacing planners with loop controllers. Communicating velocity or force values as setpoints to a loop controller can be characterised as energy that is downstreamed to the rest of the control structure and exchanged with the environment. Awareness of this energy information is useful for addressing dependability aspects in robotics where energy plays a role. This framework comprises metamodels and models for composing and structuring energy-aware sequence-control software that provides information of the energy supplied, for instance, by a trajectory planner. In addition, this paper gives an overview of the computation and communication requirements of this energy information. We present a use case where this structure facilitates using energy as a physical-interaction constraint and dependability metric for robot control.