Towards a Comprehensive Taxonomy for Characterizing Robots

Every day a new robot is developed with advanced characteristics and technical qualities. The increasingly rapid growth of robots and their characteristics demands bridging between the application requirements and the robot specifications. This process requires a supporting conceptual structure that can capture as many robot qualities as possible. Presenting robot characteristics through the proposed conceptual structure would enable designers to optimize robot capabilities against application requirements. It would also help application developers to select the most appropriate robot. Without a formal structure, an accurate linking between the robot domain and the application domain is not possible. This paper presents a novel theoretical representation that can capture robot features and capabilities and express them as descriptive dimensions to be used to develop a capability profile. The profile is intended to unify robot description and presentation. The proposed structure is reinforced with several layers, sections, categorizations and levels to allow a detailed explanation of robot characteristics. It is hoped that the proposed structure will influence the design, development, and testing of robots for specific applications. At the same time, it would help in highlighting the corresponding outlines in robot application requirements.