{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,12]],"date-time":"2025-10-12T04:11:02Z","timestamp":1760242262073,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":13,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2017,2,17]],"date-time":"2017-02-17T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1487289600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Research on robots that accompany humans is being continuously studied. The Pet-Bot provides walking-assistance and object-carrying services without any specific controls through interaction between the robot and the human in real time. However, with Pet-Bot, there is a limit to the number of robots a user can use. If this limit is overcome, the Pet-Bot can provide services in more areas. Therefore, in this study, we propose a swarm-driving middleware design adopting the concept of a swarm, which provides effective parallel movement to allow multiple human-accompanying robots to accomplish a common purpose. The functions of middleware divide into three parts: a sequence manager for swarm process, a messaging manager, and a relative-location identification manager. This middleware processes the sequence of swarm-process of robots in the swarm through message exchanging using radio frequency (RF) communication of an IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol and manages an infrared (IR) communication module identifying relative location with IR signal strength. The swarm in this study is composed of the master interacting with the user and the slaves having no interaction with the user. This composition is intended to control the overall swarm in synchronization with the user activity, which is difficult to predict. We evaluate the accuracy of the relative-location estimation using IR communication, the response time of the slaves to a change in user activity, and the time to organize a network according to the number of slaves.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s17020392","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2017,2,17]],"date-time":"2017-02-17T12:10:34Z","timestamp":1487333434000},"page":"392","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":3,"title":["Middleware Design for Swarm-Driving Robots Accompanying Humans"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"17","author":[{"given":"Min","family":"Kim","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Software Convergence, Kyungpook National University, 80 Daehakro, Bukgu, Daegu 702-701, Korea"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Sang","family":"Kim","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Software Convergence, Kyungpook National University, 80 Daehakro, Bukgu, Daegu 702-701, Korea"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8171-195X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Soon","family":"Kang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Electronics Engineering, College of IT Engineering, Kyungpook National University, 80 Daehakro, Bukgu, Daegu 702-701, Korea"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2017,2,17]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Kim, M., Lee, J., and Kang, S. (2016). A Self-Organizing Interaction and Synchronization Method between a Wearable Device and Mobile Robot. Sensors, 16.","DOI":"10.3390\/s16060842"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"150","DOI":"10.1016\/j.asoc.2014.12.002","article-title":"A new approach for dynamic fuzzy logic parameter tuning in Ant Colony Optimization and its application in fuzzy control of a mobile robot","volume":"28","author":"Castillo","year":"2015","journal-title":"Appl. Soft Comput. J."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Choi, I.-S., Choi, J.-S., and Chung, W.-J. (2012, January 16\u201318). Leader-follower formation control without information of heading angle. Proceedings of the 2012 IEEE\/SICE International Symposium on System Integration (SII), Fukuoka, Japan.","DOI":"10.1109\/SII.2012.6427361"},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Poonawala, H.A., Satici, A.C., and Spong, M.W. (2013, January 23\u201326). Leader-follower formation control of nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots using only position measurements. Proceedings of the 2013 9th Asian Control Conference (ASCC), Istanbul, Turkey.","DOI":"10.1109\/ASCC.2013.6606313"},{"key":"ref_5","first-page":"1","article-title":"Leader-follower formation control without leader\u2019s velocity information","volume":"57","author":"Shen","year":"2014","journal-title":"Sci. China Inf. Sci."},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Soorki, M.N., Talebi, H., and Nikravesh, S.K. (2011, January 9\u201312). A robust dynamic leader\u2013follower formation control with active obstacle avoidance. Proceedings of the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Anchorage, AK, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICSMC.2011.6083955"},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"727","DOI":"10.1016\/j.robot.2009.10.007","article-title":"Formation path following control of unicycle-type mobile robots","volume":"58","author":"Ghommam","year":"2010","journal-title":"Robot. Auton. Syst."},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1886","DOI":"10.1080\/00207179.2011.627686","article-title":"A virtual structure approach to formation control of unicycle mobile robots using mutual coupling","volume":"84","author":"Sadowska","year":"2011","journal-title":"Int. J. Control"},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1806","DOI":"10.1016\/j.robot.2014.07.004","article-title":"Stable navigation in formation for a multi-robot system based on a constrained virtual structure","volume":"62","author":"Benzerrouk","year":"2014","journal-title":"Robot. Auton. Syst."},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"926","DOI":"10.1109\/70.736776","article-title":"Behavior-based formation control for multirobot teams","volume":"14","author":"Balch","year":"1998","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Robot. Autom."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Liu, B., Zhang, R., and Shi, C. (2006, January 3\u20136). Formation Control of Multiple Behavior-based robots. Proceedings of the 2006 International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Security, Guangzhou, China.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICCIAS.2006.294194"},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"48","DOI":"10.2478\/s13230-010-0006-0","article-title":"The NSB control: A behavior-based approach for multi-robot systems","volume":"1","author":"Antonelli","year":"2010","journal-title":"Paladyn J. Behav. Robot."},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"151","DOI":"10.1109\/TMECH.2008.2011810","article-title":"A Fast Onboard Relative Positioning Module for Multirobot Systems","volume":"14","author":"Pugh","year":"2009","journal-title":"IEEE\/ASME Trans. Mechatron."}],"container-title":["Sensors"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/17\/2\/392\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T18:28:29Z","timestamp":1760207309000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/17\/2\/392"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2017,2,17]]},"references-count":13,"journal-issue":{"issue":"2","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2017,2]]}},"alternative-id":["s17020392"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/s17020392","relation":{},"ISSN":["1424-8220"],"issn-type":[{"type":"electronic","value":"1424-8220"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2017,2,17]]}}}