Robotics and Autonomous Systems 61 (2013) 12151223

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Robotics and Autonomous Systems

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/robot

Applied ontologies and standards for service robots

Tams Haidegger a,b, , Marcos Barreto c , Paulo Gonalves d , Maki K. Habib e ,
Sampath Kumar Veera Ragavan f , Howard Li g , Alberto Vaccarella h , Roberta Perrone h ,
Edson Prestes i
a
buda University, Budapest, Hungary
b
Austrian Center for Medical Innovation and Technology (ACMIT), Wiener Neustadt, Austria
c
Distributed Systems Laboratory (LaSiD), UFBA, Brazil
d
Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco / Technical University of Lisbon, Center of Intelligent Systems, IDMEC / LAETA, Portugal
e
The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt
f
Monash University, Sunway campus, Selangor, Malaysia
g
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of New Brunswick, Canada
h
Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering (DEIB), NearLab Medical Robotics, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy
i
Instituto de Informtica, UFRGS, Brazil

highlights
We present the ongoing work towards a core ontology dedicated to the field of robotics and automation.
We describe the role of ontologies in robotics at large.
We provide a thorough review of service robot ontologies.
We describe the existing standards for robots, along with the future trends in the domain.
We define the current issues and solutions possible with ontology development for humanrobot interaction.

article info abstract

Article history: Service robotics is an emerging application area for human-centered technologies. The rise of household
Available online 6 June 2013 and personal assistance robots forecasts a humanrobot collaborative society. One of the robotics com-
munitys major task is to streamline development trends, work on the harmonization of taxonomies and
Keywords:
ontologies, along with the standardization of terms, interfaces and technologies. It is important to keep
Service robotics
the scientific progress and public understanding synchronous, through efficient outreach and education.
Robot ontologies
Robot standards These efforts support the collaboration among research groups, and lead to widely accepted standards,
Humanrobot interaction beneficial for both manufacturers and users. This article describes the necessity of developing robotics on-
tologies and standards focusing on the past and current research efforts. In addition, the paper proposes a
roadmap for service robotics ontology development. The IEEE Robotics & Automation Society is sponsoring
the working group Ontologies for Robotics and Automation. The efforts of the Working group are presented
here, aiming to connect the cutting edge technology with the users of these servicesthe general public.
2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction to rationalize production at manufacturing sites. Nowadays, robots

Between the 1960s and the 90s, most robots and robotics in
general were related to industrial applications, mainly intending
Corresponding author at: buda University, Budapest, Hungary. Tel.: +36
13658550.
E-mail addresses: haidegger@ieee.org (T. Haidegger), marcoseb@dcc.ufba.br
(M. Barreto), paulo.goncalves@ipcb.pt (P. Gonalves), maki@aucegypt.edu
(M.K. Habib), veera.ragavan@monash.edu (S.K.V. Ragavan), howard@unb.ca (H. Li),
alberto.vaccarella@mail.polimi.it (A. Vaccarella), roberta.perrone@mail.polimi.it
(R. Perrone), edson.prestes@ieee.org (E. Prestes).
0921-8890/$ see front matter 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2013.05.008
are becoming ubiquitous, reaching exceptional capabilities and ro-
bustness; being able to support, accompany and nurse humans. In
particular, robotic helpers are able to perform a wide range of tasks,
such as healthcare and personal assistance [13]. These kinds of
robots are commonly called service robots. Service robots typically
share the human environment and exhibit basic intelligent behav-
ior to accomplish assigned tasks. They are considered as a branch
in the evolution of robots and widely recognized as a dominant re-
search field in the near future. Fig. 1 shows the evolution of the dif-
ferent fields of robotics, implying an increasing Degree of Autonomy
(DoA) and system complexity along with human-centered appli-
cations. Nowadays, industrial robots are becoming more versatile
1216 T. Haidegger et al. / Robotics and Autonomous Systems 61 (2013) 12151223
Fig. 1. Evolution of robotics. Current trends are leading towards more complex, more personalized systems and robot services. This implies flexible systems that are able
to perform tasks in an unconstrained, human-centered environment.
and flexible, partially due to the improved cooperation with hu-
mans.
The paradigm shift towards pervasive robotics leads to many
open questions and research directions relevant to ontological
research and standardization [4,5]. Ontologies allow a clear dialog
between all stakeholders involved in the life-cycle of a robotic
system, and enable the integration and efficient communication
of heterogeneous robotic systems. They can be used in the earlier
phase of an evolving domain to facilitate the communication and
knowledge exchange among groups from different areas, without
really forcing them to align their research with the particular view
of a given research group.
On the other hand, standards are meant for industrial bodies to
provide guidelines for commercial system development and man-
ufacturing. They are used to support legislation and to empower
official bodies, enforcing liability. For that reason, they should be
based on mature, established and widely accepted technologies.
Ideally, standards could (and should) greatly rely on already
accepted and used ontologies. This is the reason why they are
discussed together in this paper, as two stages of an evolutionary
process. It is also important that the community keeps the pace
with the accelerating global Research and Development (R&D),
employing self-regulation in development practices and research
ethics, even before consensual standards and regulations are born.
This paper aims to give an introduction to the motivation and
fundamental ideas of the IEEE Ontologies for Robotics and Automa-
tion Working Group (ORA WG) [6], and an insight to the ongoing
work of its sub-groups. The sub-group stands to provide guidelines
for creating ontologies that will help future research, then natu-
rally transforming into standards for the field. Specifically, this ar-
ticle focuses on the ORA WG Service Robotics sub-group (ORA SeR),
discussing its goals, recent achievements and future challenges.
The current focus of the SeR group is to collect, categorize and
merge existing ontologies and standards, and initiate the develop-
ment of new specific ones on top of the state of the art.
The paper is structured as follows: an introduction to service
robots and their definitions is presented in Section 2. Section 3
presents the rationale for ontologies and describes the motivation
for using ontologies for service robots. Section 4 gives a thorough
literature review of ontologies used in robotics. When developing
robotics ontologies, human factors must be considered; the on-
tology development for humanrobot interaction is presented in
Section 5. Since the development of robotics ontologies needs
standardization, Section 6 describes the standards for robots, with
a special focus on service robots. Section 7 describes the work in
progress by the IEEE ORA Working Group. Future work and con-
clusions are presented in Sections 8 and 9, respectively.
2. Defining the domain of service robots
Developing an ontology or a standard is not an easy task, es-
pecially when it encompasses a huge field, like service robotics.
Although the potential applications of these robots are well un-
derstood, it is not easy to provide a clear and precise definition for
service robots. There are several definitions and none of them are
generally accepted due to the huge variety of intrinsic character-
istics of service robots (in their form, structure and application
area) [7]. Below, we discuss some of them, pointing out possible
sources of confusion.
According to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR):
Definition 1. A service robot is a robot which operates semi or
fully autonomously to perform services useful to the well-being of
humans and equipment, excluding manufacturing operations [7].
With this definition, an industrial robot, e.g., a robotic arm, could
easily be classified as a service robot if it is installed in a non-
industrial environment to perform non-manufacturing task. For
instance, this arm could serve beer in a bar or be used to perform a
surgery.
To minimize ambiguity in classification, the International Stan-
dardization Organization (ISO) has been working on a standard def-
inition under the scope of Technical Committee 184, Sub-Committee
2, Robots and Working Devices since 2007 [8]. The new version of
the proposed definition (ISO 8373:2012) is:
Definition 2. A service robot is a robot that performs useful tasks
for humans or equipment, excluding industrial automation appli-
cations [9].
This definition does not emphasize aspects related to autonomy
in order to classify a robot as a service robot, while in the ISO stan-
dard, autonomy is an inherent property of any robot.
Definition 3. A robot is an actuated mechanism programmable in
two or more axes with a degree of autonomy, moving within its
environment, to perform intended tasks.
 T. Haidegger et al. / Robotics and Autonomous Systems 61 (2013) 12151223
Fig. 2. Categories of medical/non-medical personal service robots. Existing
commercial product and better-known prototypes are listed to provide examples
to reduce ambiguity [12].
Definition 3 is precise in stating that a robot should be an ac-
tuated mechanism programmable in two or more axes. However,
it is still imprecise, since there is no consensus on DoA yet. That
makes it difficult to determine what exactly is the minimum de-
gree that makes an actuated mechanism with the above features
classified as a robot. The concept of autonomy is still being de-
bated within the community. Some proposals have been formu-
lated, such as the Autonomy Levels For Unmanned Systems (ALFUS)
framework developed by the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) [10,11]. Therefore, Definition 2 still has similar
problems of Definition 1.
In the ISO standard similarly to IFR service robots can be
categorized as personal and professional service robots according
to the tasks to be performed [9]:
Definition 4. A personal service robot is a service robot used for
a non-commercial task, usually by lay persons (e.g., a domestic
servant robot).
Definition 5. A professional service robot is a service robot used
for a commercial task, usually operated by a properly trained
operator (e.g., a fire-fighting robot).
Specifically for personal service robots, ISO TC 184/SC 2/WG
7 workgroup for Personal care robot safety categorizes personal
service robots (also called personal care robots) as medical and non-
medical robots [12].
Definition 6. Non-medical personal care robots are defined as ma-
chines for performing aiding actions, and actions contributing di-
rectly towards improvement in the quality of life of humans, except
medical applications.
Definition 7. Medical robots are defined as medical electrical
equipment and systems which are used to diagnose, treat or re-
habilitate patients from medical conditions.
Moreover, service robots can be broken down into three classes
based on their relation to humans, since human-centered robotics
is becoming dominant [1,13,14]:
Class 1 robots that replace humans at work in dirty, hazardous
environment and tedious operations, such as vacuuming,
rescuing people from fire or delivering medication;
1217
Class 2 robots that operate closely with humans to alleviate
incommodity or to increase comfort, such as entertainment,
assisting the elderly, or carrying patients;
Class 3 robots that operate on humans, e.g., medical robots for
surgery, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation.
The above definitions and classifications show the complexity
involved in defining concepts. Much of the complexity comes
from the subjectivity in identifying the precise borderline between
systems assigned to particular tasks.1 For example, Definitions 1
and 2 explicitly exclude industrial applications. According to the
above classes, a service robot is a robot that should replace humans
at work in hazardous environments and tedious operations,
however, these operations and environments can be viewed as
associated to industrial robots in industrial environments.
To avoid these pitfalls, we need to use tools that allow formal
and unambiguous definitions. In this sense, ontology plays an im-
portant role, since an ontology permits an explicit and formal speci-
fication of a shared conceptualization [15].
Fig. 2 shows several applications related to service robotics. De-
pending on the intended use, similar systems can belong to differ-
ent categories. For instance, an exoskeleton can be classified as a
medical robot when it is used in a rehabilitation process or as a
non-medical robot when it is used in assistive tasks, according to
Definitions 6 and 7. Although both definitions belong to the same
robot class, i.e., personal service robots, an exoskeleton can be used
in military tasks [16], which contradicts the intended use of this
kind of robot. Currently, the categorization of a new system is
solely the manufacturers responsibility. Understandably, there are
serious questions arising regarding the boundary issues of these
categories, which is now the focus of the international standard-
ization bodies [12].
3. Case for ontologies
Ontology or subject of existence first appeared in philosoph-
ical literature in the times of Aristotle. Ontologies can be viewed as
content theories that focus on properties and relationships among
objects from a specific domain [17]. They act as a body of knowl-
edge that is based on a vocabulary used to describe the domain.
They have been applied to different fields, ranging from genet-
ics [18] to knowledge portals [19], as an approach to ensure a
consistent relationship between terms and their properties. Specif-
ically in robotics, ontologies can be used to represent the domain
knowledge to be transferred and shared between different groups
of humans, robots and other devices [20,21].
Ontologies are shared knowledge. So, it is important that they
are standardized for usage in a certain group of people such as
in IEEE Robotic and Automation Society. A review of literature on
ontologies also reveals another startling fact. The word ontology
refers to glossaries and data dictionaries; thesauri and taxonomies;
schema and data models; formal ontologies and inference mod-
els [22,23].
There are many definitions for Ontology. One possible definition
for Ontology is provided by Kalfoglou and Schorlemmer [24]:
Definition 8. Ontology is a tuple S , A, where S is the vocabulary
(or signature) of the ontology and A is the set of ontological axioms
specifying the intended domain vocabulary.
1 From the standardization point of view, a system is always handled according
to its intended use.
1218 T. Haidegger et al. / Robotics and Autonomous Systems 61 (2013) 12151223
Table 1
Comparison of ontologies and models.
Feature Model
Deployment No need to be shared openly or shared within a
small group (e.g., among developers/designers)a
Open/Closed Closed world, hence can be prescriptive or
descriptive
Transformable Can be transformed from one to another,
meta-models can be bridged between one and
another
Propagation of constraints Can be propagated both ways
Implementation level At lower abstraction levels
Possibility of integration Generally done using transformation and
Generation
Abstraction level Models are more concretehence they result in
actual implementation (e.g., can be transformed
into Code)
a
For example a nonlinear control model of a UAV is not an ontology.
In a similar definition given in [25], the signature S is broken
down into three sets (1) a set of concepts (C), (2) a set of rela-
tions (R) and (3) the set of instances (I); thus, an ontology is a 4-
tuple C , R, I , A. Other ontology definitions that have n-tuple with
n = 5 [26] and n = 6 [27] can also be found in the literature.
As evident from the numerous definitions proposed for ontol-
ogy, it has been applied informally and formally, as abstract and
concrete models [28]. With such diversity [22], contrasting notions
of ontologies ranging from being a concrete engineering artifact to
a branch of metaphysics concerned with nature and relations to
being, i.e., from a human-readable ontology such as a semantic
Wiki to a completely machine-processable and interpretable on-
tology such as Ontology Web Language (OWL).2
Ontological engineering research received its impetus from in-
dependent research work carried out mainly by different commu-
nities in computer science, Artificial Intelligence (AI) or semantic
web. Recently, the focus of ontological development community
has moved from AI Labs to domain expertspeople who have accu-
mulated valuable functional knowledge of an area. In many fields,
(ranging from medicine to defense research), domain experts play
an important role in developing standard ontologies. They help to
define a common vocabulary and basic domain concepts (including
machine-interpretable definitions), which are then used to share
information [29].
Ontology engineering for robotics is at a crossroads, since ex-
perts from different fields (electro-mechanical, information tech-
nology, etc.) bring their own language, practices and methodology
to create and store knowledge in order to create ontologies. Flouris
et al. [30] state:
We believe that this lack of a standard terminology constitutes
a major bottleneck for the ontology change community, causing
an unnecessary confusion as well as misunderstandings.
The right balance should be adopted by the robotics ontology
community between philosophically well founded heavyweight
ontologies using languages focusing on expressiveness and clarity
vs. lightweight ontologies focused on computer properties to guar-
antee machine-interpretable definitions.3
3.1. Models vs. ontologies
Ontologies are different from models (model-based representa-
tion and expert systems) for several reasons. The most important
2 http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-ref.
3 A lightweight ontology is a semantic network using only typed binary relations,
and usually defined using a lightweight ontology language(e.g. XOL, RDF(S),
SHOE etc.) whereas a heavyweight ontology is usually domain specific, expressive
ontologies consisting of an extensive vocabulary and taxonomy.
Ontology
Shared by all people in a domain, or across many domains.
Open world assumption lead to a descriptive models only
Ontologies can only be mapped from one to another using additional
axioms and aligning them to create a shared ontology
One way only
At computation-independent model levels
More difficult and done using techniques like lifting and bridging
Ontology is more descriptive and abstract and hence it can be used for KR
research.
is that they represent general knowledge shared by a community,
i.e., they do not only stand for a particular view of a person of a
small group of people. Other differences are mainly based on the
open-world and closed-world assumptions. In Table 1, we list the
differences between a model and an ontology.
4. Ontologies at work
4.1. Benefit of creating ontologies
Since ontologies can efficiently represent the knowledge of a
specific system (or domain), their analysis allows a better under-
standing of such systems. Without ontologies, it is very difficult to
establish a common vocabulary to represent all the knowledge in-
volved. A lack of these can cause inconsistencies and hide the in-
teraction between the various elements of the system.
Object-oriented systems apply domain-specific ontologies to
represent objects, attributes and procedures. AI systems use
ontologies to represent and to operate the knowledge by means of
inference. Expanding the scope, various knowledge-based systems
rely on ontologies to perform reasoning tasks that depends on
large amounts of information [31]. For instance, the construction
and use of a data based ontology for steam turbine diagnosis is
presented in [32]; ontologies are applied to the development of a
home automation system in [33].
Ontologies also enable knowledge sharing and the construction
of a knowledge base describing specific situations within a domain.
Focusing on robotics, ontologies are important to represent the
knowledge acquired by robots. They allow sharing the concepts
coming from different sub-domains and the communication
between robots with different roles and capabilities, or between
humans and robots.
4.2. Review of robotic ontology projects
Ontologies have been benefiting robotics for the past years by
providing new approaches to robot design and operation. These
have been implemented successfully for autonomous, industrial,
or service robots. For robot design and development, ontologies
have been using OWL to describe robots including their structural
and operation capabilities for urban search and rescue [34,35].
Regarding operations, they could be [35]:
long range, human stairway-access and upper floor situational
awareness;
contaminated area survey; site assessment;
victim identification;
mitigation activities and so on.
 T. Haidegger et al. / Robotics and Autonomous Systems 61 (2013) 12151223
From [34], operations are related to topological features (like
tunnel, room, etc.), surface conditions (like sandy, dusty, etc.), vis-
ibility, field and radiation conditions, etc. Both papers converge
in defining similar structural robot capabilities; like size, locomo-
tion mechanism, sensors, humanrobot interaction and software/
hardware processing.
To describe sensors and their specifications, several ontologies
have been developed, and were reviewed by Compton et al. [36].
In [37], the same previous group presents its sensor ontology that
describes the capabilities and properties of sensors as well as de-
scribing sensors as compositions of their components. For exam-
ple, a wind sensor can measure wind speed and direction, while
having different performance requirements under various work-
ing conditions. This sensor can also be added to a temperature
sensor, to have a wind chill sensor, that outputs a value dependent
on wind and temperature measures.
In [38], the development of an ontology is presented that allows
for reasoning on the sensors needed to accomplish a given mission,
e.g., a military mission. In this work, a package configuration (of
platform and sensors) is outputted for a given task, with precise
capability requirements. For a task that requires night operations
capability, and the ability to detect infrared (IR) radiation, what is
the best sensor to use? The reasoner then outputs the IR sensor,
with the following capabilities (DayNight, IRRadiation) that best
matches the task. The reasoner is based on matching the sensor
and task capabilities defined in the ontology.
Under the recent wave of open-source software for the robotics
community, two software tools that can be used to implement on-
tologies and put them to work in a robotic system were recently
proposed. Open Robot Ontology (ORO) [39] and a Knowledge Pro-
cessing Framework (KnowRob) [40] extract information from well-
known upper ontologies like SUMO and/or OpenCyc, and develop
specific knowledge databases for robots. Both approaches can be
used with the Robot Operating System (ROS) [41]. Robotic tasks and
robotic actions specific to home environments are implemented in
these ontologies. The ontologies are employed by the robot to rea-
son in the environment and also interact with humans. Specifically,
KnowRob has the capability to reason from images captured by the
robots vision sensor, using reasoners and machine learning tools
like Prolog and WEKAfrom the pre-defined ontology therein.
In [42], an ontology to aid grasping and manipulation is pre-
sented. This ontology represents the functional and geometric part
affordances of object to enhance a task based grasp. It is of special
interest for a service robot, while interacting with humans.
Additionally, several ontologies have been proposed for de-
scribing the robot design, operational behavior, protocols for hu-
manrobot interaction and also for robotic system software de-
velopment. For instance, RoboDB [43] is a database that uses
semantic Web technologies to store information about robot em-
bodiments (physical components). Based on this information, on-
tologies focused on the physical characteristics of robots can be
created and populated. RoboDB can also help with different knowl-
edge representations used during the establishment of robot mid-
dleware.
In [44], the KnowLang formal language for knowledge represen-
tation is described as part of the ASCENS project [45]. This language
is used in a multi-agent system (comprised of mobile and intel-
ligent robotic units) to specify different knowledge domains and
reasoning primitives. ASCENS considers four knowledge domains,
while a specific ontology together with a logical framework is
used to describe concepts, objects and the relationships between
them. A case study based on a swarm of MarXbot robot units is
also presented.
In [46], the Ontology for Autonomous Systems (OASys) is pre-
sented. OASys is comprised by two sub-ontologies: ASys ontology
(conceptualization of autonomous systems) and ASys engineering
1219
ontology (support for the engineering process of autonomous sys-
tems). Each sub-ontology is split into parts, to better represent con-
cepts and relationships. OASys also incorporates a methodology to
generate conceptual models. A full UML-based implementation of
OASys is also described, along with two testbed applications for
robot and process control.
Ontologies are also used to describe spatial information and
navigational approaches from cognitive robotics, based on existing
ontologies, such as DOLCE and BFO [47].
Standard Ontology for Ubiquitous and Pervasive Applications
(SOUPA) [48] is a standard ontology that represents concepts re-
lated to intelligent agents and a set of characteristics related to
time, space, actions, policies, among other items. Context Broker
Architecture (CoBrA) [49] exploits the SOUPA ontology to allow
knowledge sharing, context reasoning, and user privacy protection.
It also incorporates spatial and temporal features coming from ex-
isting ontologies expressed in the DARPA Agent Markup Language
(DAML) [50].
5. Human factor for ontology development
When building ontologies, the end-users must also be consid-
ered. Today, HumanRobot Interaction (HRI) [51] is a major concern
for robotics researchers and practitioners, due to the increasing
need of robots helping and cooperating with humans [4]. People
are expecting robots to become part of their lives e.g., the Roomba
vacuum cleaner [52], the DaVinci surgical system [53], or advanced
toys, such as the Sony Aibo [54].
HRI poses new challenges such as safety issues and the degree
of autonomy [12]. Current designs typically focus on how robots
and humans form teams [4]. In order to develop safe, precise and
easy to use HRI tools, knowledge should be properly and formally
defined. Knowledge representation will lead to robots that can use
ontologies to perform tasks.
Humans can interact with robots in several ways, but mainly as
a developer or as an end-user. First, for the developer, a core ontology
must be used to represent specific knowledge (definition of the
robot, type of robots to use, components to use, and so on). Second,
for the end-user, application domain ontology needs to be defined
for the robots work environment, e.g., knowledge of the household
environment or the healthcare environment. Fig. 3 illustrates these
two cases.
6. The need for standards in service robotics
6.1. Benefit of standardization
The evolution of service robots and their application in all
dimensions of our daily life require standardization of robotics. The
total number of professional service robots sold in 2011 was over
16,000, up from 15,000 in 2010 (medical robots grew by 38% while
factory logistic systems grew by 13%). The sales value reached $3.6
billion. The sales forecast of service robots for professional use
(201215) projects an increase to about 94,000 units at a value
of $16.3 billion, and to about 11 million units with a value of
$4.8 billion for personal service robots [55]. The latter includes
vacuum and floor cleaning, helpers for the elderly, lawn-mowing
and entertainment robots, etc.
The development of service robots requires the R&D of context-
based interdisciplinary science and technology, relying on a com-
mon understanding of knowledge and terminologies within the
field, such as mechanisms, modules, functions, sensors, and soft-
ware, etc.
1220 T. Haidegger et al. / Robotics and Autonomous Systems 61 (2013) 12151223
Fig. 3. The components of a robotic system with core and domain ontologies, and interaction with humans.
Robot standards facilitate the design, manufacturing, produc-
tion, technology transfer, purchase and use of robots. In the
meantime, standards ensure a common legal framework. Stan-
dardization activities are associated with manufacturers,
researchers, users and authorities. Common interests and re-
quirements are ensured through the development of standards.
Standardization is essential in the development of Robotic and
Automation (R&A) systems. Lacking guidance and standardization
in robotics may cause slower development, or lead to divergence
of development, causing frustration for not only consumers but
also manufacturers. Standardization not only facilitates commer-
cialization and knowledge transfer, but also guides R&D activities
towards more focused solutions.
ISO is one of the pioneers creating robotics standards. ISO
drafted standards for industrial robots in 1980s. Besides ISO,
the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the Object
Management Group (OMG) and other organizations also started
developing standards for the emerging service robotics. According
to the IEEE RAS Standing Committee for Standards, the objectives for
standardization include:
Common measures and definitions in R&A;
Measurability and comparability of R&A technology;
Integrability, portability and reusability.
A standard for R&A should:
Define precisely the concepts of the robotics domain;
Ensure a common understanding among various stakeholders
(involved in any part of the life cycle of robotics systems);
Enable efficient and reliable data integration and information
transfer among robotics systems;
Allow for unambiguous knowledge transfer among any group
of humans, robots and other systems.
Existing standards focus on one specific problem each, such as
vocabulary, performance criteria and related test methods, me-
chanical interfaces, safety requirements, graphical user interface
for programming and operation or terminology and practice for
field robotics.
6.2. Current robotics standards
Robotic systems need to meet hardware and functionality re-
quirements. Hardware requirements are related to the physical
components of the robotic system, such as sensors and actuators.
Functionalities can be intrinsic and extrinsic. The first is related to
the software architecture of the robotic system. The second is re-
lated to the tasks to be performed, while interacting with human
operators in the environment. All these are affected by collateral
and particular standards, developed by international bodies.
Several standards exist for robotics in general. Many should
be considered, when working on the standardization of service
robots:
International Organization for Standardization: ISO 8373:2012,
ISO 9787:1999, ISO 11593:1996, ISO 14539:2000 for industrial
robotics (under revision to include service robots), safety issues
are well defined in ISO 10218-1/2:2011;
American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM): ASTM E2521-
07, for Urban Search and Rescue Robotic Operations;
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA): S-066-
1995, for Space Automation and Robotics;
Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS): JIS B 0144:2000, JIS B
0185:2002, JIS B 0186:2003, JIS B 0187:2005, TR B 0010:1999,
for Assembly, Intelligent, Mobile, Service and Personal Robots.
In addition, several groups have been defining ontologies as
draft standards for service robots, such as the Robot Standards and
Reference architecture (RoSta) (wiki.robot-standards.org). RoSta was
a Coordination Action funded under the European Unions Sixth
Framework Programme (FP6) that aimed at becoming the main
international contact point for robot standards and reference ar-
chitectures for service robotics. Another example is the Ontology-
based unified robot knowledge for service robots in indoor
environments [56], developed in Korea within the project Devel-
opment of Context Adaptive Cognition Technology.
6.3. Further standardization efforts
One of the newest results is the ISO/FDIS 13482:2013 that will
be published in August 2013, defining safety requirements for non-
medical personal care robots. At the ISO Technical Committee 184
(TC on Automation Systems and Integration) meeting (Budapest,
2010), the SC 2 technical sub-committee on Robots and Robotic De-
vices assisted in the formation of a joint work group with the IEC/SC
62A sub-committee (Common Aspects of Electrical Equipment used
in Medical Practice) under IEC administration to develop a new pro-
posal for a Collateral Standard within the IEC/ANSI 60601 family.
Thus the JWG 9: Joint Work Group on Standard for Medical Robots
was created with the involvement of several international experts
from the academia, government and industry [12]. The scope of the
standard is the safety and essential performance requirements for
medical electrical equipment. In addition, it may include systems
employing robotic technology (i.e., medical robots). The objectives
include:
Defining medical software systems and associated technical
requirements;
Streamlining the application of risk management;
Clarifying the definition of essential performance;
Identifying essential performance and mitigating risks;
Defining safety factors for robotic equipment.
Seven meetings of the workgroup have been held: in Budapest
(2010), Sunnyvale (2011), Nremberg (2011), Orlando (2012),
Seoul (2012), Santa Clara (2013) and Shanghai (2013), while one
more is planned for 2013, and three additional meetings for 2014.
The latest events focused on the proper classification of medical
 T. Haidegger et al. / Robotics and Autonomous Systems 61 (2013) 12151223
robots, and the definitions of automation regarding automated
function vs. autonomy, considering the ALFUS concept [11].
The group works on the identification of additional risks and
hazards, and describes the various levels of DoA. Medical robots
standardization guidelines (defined by the ECs Medical Device
Directive in Europe) need basic safety and essential performance
requirementsyet to be formulated.
The Robots and Robotic Equipment (UL 1740) [57] is under devel-
opment by the Underwriters Laboratory. This standard addresses
issues for both professional and service robots, intended for indoor
and outdoor applications. The robotic equipment can be used for
assembly, parts transfer, automated material handling, inspection,
clean room applications and beyond.
Relying on these standards, service robot technologies should
be developed to comply and assure safety in a humanrobot co-
worker scenario. Nevertheless, safety should be both assured to
humans, robots and the environment itself.
7. The IEEE RAS efforts for standardization
The IEEE RAS Ontologies for Robotics and Automation Working
Group (ORA WG) was created in 2011 with the aim to link exist-
ing ISO, IEC, etc. standards and the current research efforts towards
new regulatory frameworks [58]. The goal is to develop a standard
for knowledge representation and reasoning in robotics and au-
tomation, together with the representation of concepts of an initial
set of application domains [6].
The ORA WG is comprised of over 50 members, representing
over twenty countries, a cross-section of industry, academia and
government. The group has four years to prepare a document
that will be evaluated by invited experts, organizations and the
IEEESA Standards Board. There are four sub-groups, of which one
is dedicated to service robotics (SeR).
The SeR group is developing ontologies, by defining service
robotic concepts and the relationship among concepts such that
humans and robots can interact to perform tasks in any environ-
ment. These ontologies will be used for reasoning by robots to
perform tasks. When finished, they will be merged with the ontolo-
gies developed by other ORA sub-groups and serve as a common
reference for the R&A community. The final ontology will ensure a
common understanding among members of the community and
facilitate more efficient integration and data transfer. This is guar-
anteed through the ontology engineering process used that re-
moves ambiguities and incompatible relationships. ORA WG uses
two methods called METHONTOLOGY [59] and OntoClean [60].
METHONTOLOGY is for building ontologies either from scratch, by
reusing other ontologies, or by re-engineering existing ones. It has
a checklist that allows for the identification of inconsistencies, in-
completeness and redundancy. On the other hand, OntoClean helps
to validate the ontology according to ontological adequacy of tax-
onomic relationships. It is based on general ontological notions
drawn from philosophy, like essence, identity, and unity.
Furthermore, the ORA ontology is described through mathe-
matical formalism where each concept and relationship is well-
grounded mathematically, using logics. In this case, the group uses
description logics expressed in OWL. OWL is used due to popularity
in the ontology development community, and due to the number of
tools and reasoning engines available. Moreover, it provides addi-
tional vocabulary, and facilitates greater machine interoperability
of web contents. In this sense, the ORA ontology will be available to
the R&A community to be used as a knowledge source for various
applications.
1221
8. Roadmap and future work
The global market for robots will increase more than 10% per
year through 2016 to $20 billion. The US market is expected to
grow at 15% per year while the Chinese market will grow 17% per
year. The service robot market started becoming more significant
in the first decade of the 21st century. The IEEE ontology WG will
focus on developing ontologies and standards that will lower the
R&D and product costs while increasing sophistication of service
robot technology and software.
Based on the existing standards and the ontologies under de-
velopment, within and/or outside the ORA WG, it is expected to
roll out an IEEE standard for service robotics by 2015. Following a
hopeful consensus within the working group members, in the next
phase, the Service Robots sub-group chairs will invite well-known
experts of the field, to review each step of the process and have a
suitable and consensual ontology for Service Robotics. After each
round of experts review, the ontology will hopefully be improved,
and also will serve to update other overlapping sub-group ontolo-
gies, e.g., industrial and core ontologies.
The core ontology and the sub-domain ontologies will be used
by robotic systems developers to represent specific components
knowledge, and seamlessly integrate and/or remove components
from the system. Also, robotic systems end-users for some specific
application domain, will then use the specific ontology, e.g., service
or industrial, to represent specific knowledge of the environment.
9. Conclusion
It is well understood that further development and deployment
of service robots require standardization, not only regarding
hardware and interface development, but also in terms of safety,
liability and quality.
Ontologies allow the description of the robots world, tasks and
services through precise and unambiguous vocabularies. Robotics
research must be standardized to facilitate dissemination of the
results. Robotics research needs to be clear, precise and easy to use.
There is an urgent need for knowledge representation standards
for robots and humans.
In this paper, we presented how standards and ontologies can
better describe our complex world for robotic applications. Ontol-
ogy can be used to produce well-defined definitions without am-
biguities, and eventually may contribute to the development of
standards. A general framework of knowledge representation for
robotic reasoning is defined in the scope of the ORA WG. Ontolo-
gies for robotic intelligence and knowledge should be defined as
a standard. The group undertakes tasks such as merging/aligning
partial ontologies, evaluating distributed ontologies, and extract-
ing concepts from high-level process descriptions.
Ontologies should define the general knowledge used by service
robots, and knowledge for specific applications. In the meanwhile,
ontologies are not only for professionals who use robots at work,
but also for the general public, willing to use service robots for
domestic tasks.
Acknowledgments
The IEEE-SC WG is supported by the IEEE Robotics and Au-
tomation Society. This work is partially supported by the Strategic
Project, PEst-OE/EME/LA0022/2011, through FCT (under IDMEC-
IST, research group: IDMEC/LAETA/CSI), FCT project PTDC/EME-
CRO/099333/2008 and EU-FP7-ICT-231143 project ECHORD. The
authors acknowledge the EuRoSurge FP7-ICT-2011-7-288233
project, the support of Brazilian CNPq and the Hungarian Etvs
Scholarship.
1222 T. Haidegger et al. / Robotics and Autonomous Systems 61 (2013) 12151223
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 T. Haidegger et al. / Robotics and Autonomous Systems 61 (2013) 12151223
Tams Haidegger received his M.Sc. degrees from the
Budapest University of Technology and Economics in Elec-
trical and Biomedical Engineering in 2006 and 2008,
respectively. His Ph.D. (2011) was based on a neurosurgi-
cal robot he developed when he was a visiting scholar at
the Johns Hopkins University. Currently, he is an Adjunct
Professor at the buda University, serving as the deputy
director of the newly founded ABC Center for Intelligent
Robotics. Also he is a Research Area Manager at the Aus-
trian Center of Medical Innovation and Technology and
running a spinoff company focusing on objective medical
hand hygiene control. Tams is an active member of various professional organiza-
tions, including IEEE RAS, EMBC, SPIE and MICCAI. He is a national delegate to an
ISO/IEC standardization committee focusing on safety for medical robots.
Marcos E. Barreto received a Ph.D in Computer Science
from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS),
Brazil, 2010. From 1995 to 2010, he did work at the Par-
allel and Distributed Processing Group (GPPD), at UFRGS,
conducting research in cluster and grid computing, parallel
programming libraries and performance evaluation. From
1998 to 2010, he taught several courses on distributed sys-
tems, parallel programming, databases and Web develop-
ment in several universities and colleges in the south of
Brazil. He was also a Project Manager at HP Brazil, from
2000 to 2002. Since 2010, he has been an Associate Profes-
sor at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) and a researcher at the Distributed
Systems Laboratory (LaSiD), leading and conducting research in cloud comput-
ing and dependability applied to e-science support, parallel programming and
robotics.
Paulo J.S. Gonalves was born in was born in Covilh, Por-
tugal, in 1972. He received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in
Mechanical Engineering from the Technical University of
Lisbon, Portugal, in 1998 and 2005, respectively. He is cur-
rently an Associate Professor with the Electrotechnical and
Industrial Engineering Department, School of Technology,
Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco, Portugal. He is
also a Researcher at Center of Intelligent Systems (CSI) -
IDMEC - LAETA. He has authored or coauthored more
than 70 papers and articles published in journals and con-
ference proceedings. His main research interests include
robotics, computer vision, and in particular visual servoing, chiefly as it applies to
healthcare. His research interests also include image processing, and pattern recog-
nition.
Maki K. Habib (IEEE Senior member) is a Doctor of En-
gineering Science (DES) in Intelligent and Autonomous
Robots (University of Tsukuba, Japan 1990). He did work
at different places, such as, RIKEN (Japan), RISO Labo-
ratories (Japan), EPFL (Switzerland), GMD-Japan (Japan),
Monash University (AustraliaMalaysia), KAIST (South
Korea), Saga University (Japan). He is currently a Full
Professor of Robotics and Mechatronics at the Ameri-
can University in Cairo. In addition, he is the Director of
Robotics, Control and Smart Systems master/Ph.D. pro-
grams. He did and continues to work as a Consultant and
Technical Advisor in the field of Mechatronics, Robotics and Industrial Automation
with highly recognized organizations and companies. Prof. Habib has edited seven
books and published more than 210 papers published in internationally recognized
Books, Journals and Conferences. His main area of research focuses on intelligent
and service robots, robots and sensors for risky Environments and humanitarian
demining, human adaptive and friendly mechatronics, telecooperation, distributed
teleoperation and collaborative control, intelligent sensors systems, wireless sen-
sor networks and ambient intelligence, biomechanics and biomimetic robots, intel-
ligent control, robotics and industrial automation.
1223
Sampath Kumar Veera Ragavan is currently a Senior Lec-
turer in Mechatronics Engineering at Monash University,
Sunway Campus. Before joining Monash, he worked for
several multinational companies in various capacities. He
has more than 17 years of industrial experience in the de-
sign and development of factory automation systems, fluid
power automation, software for consumer electronics and
industrial automation and has executed several projects
from concept to commissioning. He is also a Chartered En-
gineer from the Engineering council (UK). He serves as a
consultant in the field of Mechatronics, Telematics and In-
dustrial Automation.
Howard Li is an Associate Professor in the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of New
Brunswick, Canada. He is a registered Professional En-
gineer in the Province of Ontario, Canada. He is a se-
nior member of IEEE. He received the Ph.D. degree from
the University of Waterloo, Canada. He worked with At-
lantis Systems International, Defence Research and Devel-
opment Canada, and Applied AI Systems Inc. to develop
unmanned ground vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles, au-
tonomous underwater vehicles and mobile robots for both
domestic and military applications. His research interests
include linear control, nonlinear control, intelligent control, distributed control,
unmanned vehicles, mechatronics, robotics, multi-agent systems, artificial intelli-
gence, motion planning, and simultaneous localization and mapping.
Alberto Vaccarella graduated cum laude in Biomedical
Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano in December 2009
with the master thesis: Development and validation of an
integrated sensors and actuators system for neurosurgical
procedures. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at NearLab,
Bioengineering Department of Politecnico di Milano,
where he is dealing with the design and implementation
of software applications for CAS. Since January 2010 he has
collaborated at the open source project Image- Guided
Surgery ToolKit (IGSTK). He is involved in two European
projects: ACTIVE (FP7-ICT-270460) and EuRoSurge (FP7-
ICT-288233). His scientific interests cover sensors architecture, surgical navigation
systems and medical robotics.
Roberta Perrone (Milan, 1988) lives and studies in Milan.
She holds a biomedical engineering master degree in elec-
tronics biotechnologies from Politecnico di Milano in 2013
with the thesis on Ontological modeling of Neurosurgery:
application to automatic classification of temporal and ex-
tratemporal lobe epilepsies. She is working on the Euro-
pean project EuRoSurge, where she is implementing the
ontological part for the scenario that includes the reach-
ing of a certain point by an industrial robot observed by
two trackers.
Edson Prestes received his B.Sc. degree in Computer Sci-
ence (CS) from the Federal University of Par (UFPa), Brazil,
in 1996 and M.Sc. and Ph.D. in CS from the Federal Univer-
sity of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil, in 1999 and 2003,
respectively. Currently, he is Associate Professor and Head
of the Theoretical Informatics Department at Informatics
Institute (UFRGS), Vice Chair of working group funded by
IEEE RAS entitled Standard for Ontologies for Robotics and
Automation (IEEE RAS WG ORA), and a Member of IEEE
RAS Special Interest Group on Humanitarian Technology
(IEEE RAS SIGHT; member of IEEE, IEEE RAS (Robotics and
Automation Society) and IEEE SA (Standards Association). His interest fields are mo-
bile robots (SLAM, path planning, integrated exploration, and so on), ontologies and
R&A for humanitarian applications.