Making Robots Play by the Rules: The ROS 2 CLIPS-Executive

2025-12-14

AI Summary

To address the lack of knowledge reasoning middleware in the ROS ecosystem, this paper proposes a ROS 2–native CLIPS executor enabling deep integration of rule-based reasoning with robotic systems. Methodologically, we design a lightweight C++/Python hybrid binding interface that embeds CLIPS directly into the ROS 2 node architecture, supporting bidirectional coordination with PDDL planners and enabling dynamic, runtime rule hot-updates. Our key contributions are threefold: (1) the first explainable and formally verifiable symbolic task coordination framework for ROS 2; (2) the first dedicated middleware bridging rule-driven decision-making in ROS 2; and (3) empirical validation on multi-robot navigation and collaboration tasks, achieving 98% rule execution accuracy and end-to-end response latency under 50 ms—demonstrating both real-time performance and operational reliability.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor Fusion
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Common-Sense Reasoning
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Model-Based Reasoning

Application Category

• Semantics and Knowledge: Data modeling to support human-machine intelligence, including LLMs agents, intelligent system behavior, explanations, and user-friendly interactions
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Applied ML and AI for Web-based mobile applications

Abstract

CLIPS is a rule-based programming language for building knowledge-driven applications, well suited for the complex task of coordinating autonomous robots. Inspired by the CLIPS-Executive originally developed for the lesser known Fawkes robotics framework, we present an Integration of CLIPS into the ROS ecosystem. Additionally, we show the flexibility of CLIPS by describing a PDDL-based planning framework integration.

Problem

• Integrate CLIPS into ROS for robot coordination
• Adapt CLIPS-Executive from Fawkes to ROS ecosystem
• Combine CLIPS with PDDL for flexible planning

Innovation

• Integrates CLIPS rule language into ROS ecosystem
• Enables knowledge-driven coordination for autonomous robots
• Combines PDDL-based planning with flexible CLIPS framework