Ontology/marketplace of robotics components and integration environment (BPEL or CAD for robotics)?

Question

It should be possible to take the formal description of robotics components (in form of ontology, formal API descriptions or other kind of formal specification of the capabilities and requirements of this component) and import them in universal design studio and then use this studio for the integration and the building of the final robot of the final robotics systems. There are BPEL, component service architecture and business services in software development that offers to build the final software by simply integrating available services. So - my thought is - that there should be similar ecosystem for building robots and robotic systems.

I have heard about ROS and that each component provider tries to create ROS API/interface for its own component to facilitate the easy use of its component from the ROS-based robot. I am looking something like that but with self-description capabilities (as BPEL services self-describe themselves). And I am looking also for the Integrated Development Environment that can use those component descriptions, that can import them, that can model and simulate and build (compile) the final robot desing. There are lot of CAD software for architecture, for mechanical design, for EM design but is there CAD for final multipurpose robot?

May dream is to use off-the-shelf components and compose in optimal way using https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1083338/structural-design-meta-optimization-is-there-mathematical-theory-optimiza and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structured_prediction In some cases I dream to achive the optimal robot and in some cases I dream to arrive the formal specification of the component that is not yet available but whose design (e.g. for 3D printing or other kind of manufacturing) I can derive from design of my robot.

I know that Stack prohibits asking for direct recommendations of some software of components but in my case I am not asking for direct recommendation. I have idea about workflow of robot development and I am just interested:

1. How acceptable and desirable is such workflow?;
2. Is such workflow already implemented in one or other way?;
3. Maybe my idea about workflow is the failure and I should look for other kind workflow (what?) which is already implemented in the community and which achieve the same goals that my idea.

Answer 1

Do professional robot designers use semi or fully automated toolchains to implement physical systems?

Of course. Especially if you broaden your definition of robot to electro-mechanical system. Proprietary toolchains have different levels of sophistication, some no more than an internal process to speed things up, others integrating solid modeling kernels and custom electro-mechanical math models to let you input specs and speed through design trade-off selection to a final design quickly. I have helped develop both ends of the spectrum.

These are kept as trade secrets. If you find much public info on them, someone messed up...