*4.2. Platform Harmonization and Configurability*

In order to facilitate the reuse of software components, portability of applications, and exchange of know-how, a harmonization—if not standardization—of robot platforms and their application programming interfaces is desirable. The diversity of robot application domains creates a need for a flexibly configurable and customizable collaboration platform architecture that reflects the different computational capacities of robots. Thus, in analogy to operating systems for embedded systems, we need highly configurable, component-based teamwork collaboration platforms (i.e., middleware) that can be tailored to specific application needs and properties of the involved robots. Such a toolbox is missing.
