Two main trends are emerging in the area of home and service robotics.
The classical one aims at the development of a single skilled servant
robot, able to perform complex tasks in a passive environment. The
second, more recent trend aims at the achievement of domestic tasks
through the cooperation of a network of simpler robotic devices
pervasively embedded in the environment. This paper contributes to the
latter trend by describing the
PEIS Table, a robotic table that
can be embedded in a domestic environment and perform autonomous
navigation tasks. The
PEIS Table can operate alone, or it can
be part of a smart robotic environment, based on the concept of
PEIS Ecology, and cooperate with
other devices to perform more complex tasks. The hardware construction
and navigation software of the
PEIS Table are guided by a set
of requirements for robotic domestic furniture. Interestingly, these
are not the same as the requirements usually considered for service
robots.