Ontology-driven integration of advertised and operational capabilities in robots

The adaptability of robotic systems is expanding the horizons of manufacturing flexibility. However, fully leveraging the potential of these systems poses considerable challenges. A key requirement is the ability to understand and model their diverse capabilities through a standardized and semantically well-defined framework. In this paper, we introduce the Robotic Capability Ontology (RCO), developed through a systematic investigation of various types of robotic capabilities, including those related to function, quality, and process performance. We define two types of capabilities: Advertised capabilities, as specified by manufacturers, and Operational capabilities, which reflect real-world performance. The RCO framework provides an ontology-based approach to representing these capabilities in a structured and interpretable manner. Within the manufacturing context, RCO serves as a reference ontology that bridges manufacturer specifications and empirical performance data to support more accurate, explainable, and interoperable representations of robotic capabilities.