Hardware independent architecture for autonomous colaborative agents

We describe a mobile robot test system. A modular structure of the system allows easy inclusion of user hardware modules and communication systems. A client/server approach, XML/RPC based, makes the system easy to program from any operating system & language. The hardware modules are included using a hardware independent protocol as the main feature of the interface between the modules and the system that makes it very flexible and easy to use. The architecture by itself has support for many different communication modalities, as Bluetooth, GSM, Wireless, Ethernet, etc. This architecture was tested including diverse peripheries as for example video camera, microphones, speakers, etc…