scope:

This standard defines an ontology that allows representation of, reasoning about, and communication of task knowledge in the learning, robotics, and automation domain. This ontology includes a list of essential terms as well as their definitions, attributes, types, structures, properties, constraints, and relationships. In addition, it addresses how hierarchical planners and designers can represent task knowledge, allowing them to better communicate among levels of the ontology hierarchy.

Purpose

The proposed standard aims at providing a set of well-founded ontologies specifying vocabulary and definitions about shared concepts and relations in Industrial Robotics and Automation. By providing a standard vocabulary and control schema for industrial robots, end-users can utilize systems from different suppliers in their operations. This has the potential to increase competition and reduce prices for these systems.

Human-robot and heterogeneous robot-robot communication and interaction require well-defined, implementation-independent, standard vocabulary and definitions. Such requirements become particularly relevant in industrial contexts where safe robot communication and integration require clearly defined standards. Ontologies constitute a tool to create semantically rich, formal vocabularies. Recent standardization efforts by IEEE are employing ontologies for standardization in Robotics and Automation (R&A). However, such efforts have been limited to general terminology covering the entire field. Individual subdomains of R&A, such as Industrial Robotics, require specific theories, implying the need for standardized ontologies.