SPARKRS4CS: a software/hardware framework for cognitive architectures

This work describes a software/hardware framework where cognitive architectures can be realized and applied to control different kinds of robotic platforms. The framework can be interfaced with a robot prototype mediating the sensory-motor loop. Moreover 2D and 3D kinematic or dynamic simulation environments can be used to evaluate the robotic system cognitive capabilities. Here, we address design choices and implementation issues related to the proposed robotic programming environment, taking attention to its modular structure, important characteristic for a flexible and powerful framework. The main advantage introduced by the proposed architecture consists in the rapid development of applications, that can be easily tested on different robotic platforms either real or simulated, because the differences are properly masked by the architecture. Simultaneously, to validate the functionality of the proposed system an "ad hoc" simulator is implemented.