IEEE 1872, “IEEE Standard Ontologies for Robotics and Automation,” has just been released. This new standard is like an overview document of terms, definitions and concepts, only expanded to include the technical details so necessary to developing a consistent platform for knowledge sharing. So you’ll find relations and axioms used for robotics and automation defined in this standard. IEEE calls it a “reference vocabulary” for those involved in robotics and automation. The ontology presented is CORA (Core Ontology for Robotics and Automation).
What makes this so interesting is that the standard has been developed in light of the growing complexity of the interaction of robots to robots and robots to humans. Seems as though these machines are starting to get pretty smart! So it’s necessary to have tools for efficient and reliable data integration and exchange with and among them.
This is a highly technical document, with 60 pages of information provided for those working with robots in industry, academia, and government organizations. It begins with the usual three clauses for scope, referenced documents and terms and definitions (including acronyms). Clause 4 covers conventions, reminding you of how the various axioms are presented.
The balance of the document provides you with an in-depth review of SUMO (a top-level ontology of categories for ontologies) and a series of axioms. These include the CORAX axioms, CORA axioms, RPARTS axioms, and POS axioms. You’ll get a background review and technical details for each. This can include such things as attributes and measurements. To illustrate what I mean, here’s the start of the information on the PositionCoordinateSystem for the POS axiom:
“A PositionCoordinateSystem is an abstract entity used for specifying location in relation to a reference object.
(subclass PositionCoodinateSystem Abstract)”
Not necessarily stuff for the likes of me, but all you engineers out these interested in robotics will be right in your element!
Three informative annexes complete the document – Annex A on the general aspects of ontology, Annex B on developing an ontology, and Annex C, a 23-item bibliography.
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