We argue that robotic middleware can serve important roles for robotic architectures, in particular, cognitive robotic architectures, if the right kinds of interfaces are provided that allow for a tight integration between architecture and middleware. We introduce the \em Thinking Robots Agent Development Environment, TRADE, which is an extension of the previous \em Agent Development Environment, ADE, and provides advanced features for architecture integration and interactions between cognitive robotic architecture and the middleware layer. We describe several features in TRADE that are missing in the Robot Operating System (ROS), in particular, system-wide locking mechanisms, service instrumentation, and middleware service calls and discuss how they can support the architecture developers with implementing advanced architectural features such as dialogue-based system debugging and configuration, or multi-effector multi-robot behavior coordination.
@inproceedings{scheutz25aaaifs,
title={The TRADE Middleware for Advanced Robotic Architectures},
author={Matthias Scheutz},
year={2025},
booktitle={Proceedings of AAAI Fall Symposium on Unifying Representations for Robot Application Development},
url={https://hrilab.tufts.edu/publications/scheutz25aaaifs.pdf}
}