Invitation letter
We kindly invite you to an industry-wide interview study on the impact of variability in the service robotics industry. Robots can have many purposes, forms, and functions, can operate to accomplish various missions, and often operate in an open-ended environment. As a consequence, each robotic system needs to be equipped with a specific mix of functionalities that strongly depend on several factors, such as the robot mechanical structure (a rover with zero or multiple arms), the tasks to be performed (cleaning a floor, rescuing people after a disaster), and the environmental conditions (indoor, outdoor, underground). These factors give rise to a multitude of variability dimensions that call for appropriate variability mechanisms and management methodologies.
The expected length of the interviews is approximately 45 to 60 minutes. We will ask you primarily about the impact of the variability on the: 1) robots' hardware, 2) operating environment where robots are deployed, and 3) tasks robots are requested to perform.
Participating will allow you to reflect on your practices and learn about others’ practices, by receiving a state-of-the-practice report with the study findings. It will also help the research community focus on relevant problems that meet real industrial needs.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at sergio.garcia@gu.se.
Team
We are a team of researchers from Sweden (Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg), the Netherlands (Radboud University Nijmegen), and Italy (Bergamo University and University of L’Aquila). Our research focuses on software engineering, with autonomous and robotics systems as a prime area of interest. If you want to learn more about our research, feel free to take a look at some of our academic websites.