Nowadays, robots are widely used in many areas of our lifes, such as autonomous storage, self-driving vehicles, drones, industrial automation, etc. Energy is a critical factor for robotic systems, especially for mobile robots where energy is a finite resource (e.g., surveillance autonomous rovers). Since software is becoming the central focus of modern robotic systems, it is important to understand how it influences the energy consumption of the entire system. However, there is no systematic study of the state of the art in energy efficiency of robotics software that could guide research or practitioners in finding solutions and tools to develop robotic systems with energy efficiency in mind.

The goal of this paper is to present a review of existing research on energy efficiency in robotics software. Specifically, we investigate on (i) the used metrics for energy efficiency, (ii) the application domains within the robotics area covered by research on energy efficiency, (iii) the identified major energy consumers within a robotic system, (iv) how existing approaches are evaluated, (v) the used energy models, (vi) the techniques supporting the development of energy-efficient robotics software, and (vii) which quality attributes tend to be traded off when dealing with energy efficiency in robotics. We also provide a replication package to assess, extend, and/or replicate the study.

The results of this work can guide researchers and practitioners in robotics and software engineering in better reasoning and contributing to energy efficient robotics software.