ROS-based Robot Development Toward Fully Automated Network Management

While the introduction of the softwarelization technologies such as SDN and NFV transfers main focus of network management from hardware to software, the network operators still have to care for a lot of network and computing equipment located in the network center. Toward fully automated network management, we believe that robotic approach will be significant, meaning that robot will care for the physical equipment on behalf of human. This paper explains our experience and insight gained throughout development of a network management robot. We utilize ROS(Robot Operating System) which is a powerful platform for robot development and secures the ease of development and expandability. Our roadmap of the network management robot is also shown as well as three use cases such as environmental monitoring, operator assistance and autonomous maintenance of the equipment. Finally, the paper briefly explains experimental results conducted in a commercial network center.