  Software architecture related issues are important for robotic systems.
Architecture centric development and evolution of software for robotic systems
has been attracting researchers attention for more than two decades. The
objective of this work is to systematically identify, taxonomically classify
and holistically map existing solutions, research progress and trends that
influence architecture-driven modeling, development and evolution of robotic
software. We carried out a Systematic Mapping Study to identify and analyze the
relevant literature based on 56 peer-reviewed papers. We extract and synthesize
the data from selected papers to taxonomically classify the existing research
and systematically map the solutions, frameworks, notations and evaluation
methods to highlight the role of software architecture in robotic systems. We
have identified eight distinct research themes that support architectural
solutions to enable operations, evolution and development specific activities
of robotic software. The research in this area has progressed from object
oriented to component based and now to service driven robotics representing
different architectural generations. The reported solutions have exploited
model-driven, service oriented and reverse engineering techniques since 2005.
An emerging trend is cloud robotics that exploits the foundations of service
driven architectures to support an interconnected web of robots. The results of
this SMS facilitate knowledge transfer, benefiting researchers and
practitioners, focused on exploiting software architecture to model, develop
and evolve robotic systems.
