Re: Inter-robot communication
Ross Finlayson (raf@tomco.net)
Mon, 24 Jun 1996 17:39:25 -0400
At 01:08 AM 6/25/96 +0900, you wrote:
>
>
>Hello everyone,
>
>I have been a member of this list for a while now. I'm Harry Behrens
>and am currently working for my PhD at the University of Tokyo.
>My field of research is somehow connected to this mailing list's
>theme (it's 'design of distributed knowledgebases'), but I've mainly been
>"lurking" here so far :-)
>
>Anyway, because I currently have to investigate some of the issues raised
>in the thread "Inter-robot communication", I'd like to comment the following
>mail:
>
>"John D. Pritchard" said:> > Does anyone know if there is a formal
specification, or protocol, for
>"John D. Pritchard" said:> > inter-robot communication?
>"John D. Pritchard" said:>
>"John D. Pritchard" said:> use SGML
>"John D. Pritchard" said:>
>I believe that robots are 'active' objects as opposed to 'static' HTML
>pages. If the trend should go to static document description methods
>(like SGML), some discrepany of paradigm and as a result, loss of
>functional efficiency would surely result.
>I therefore would like to suggest approaches like the DCE, - or the NEO for
>those that prefer a higher level of abstraction.
>Using these well-documented development environment, I believe it could be
>possible to create a network of communicating robots.
>(For those that might think I am connected to SUN: Any development
>environment, that allows for design of distributed applications
>is OK; it's just that the two environments mentioned - DCE and NEO -
>are the only major ones, that I had a chance to work with.
>Such interacting robots could eventually grow into an infrastructure that
>would be the base for all major information retrieval services that use
>the Internet. With tools like Java, VRML and others, these robots
>could eventually serve not only 'grep'ed text indices, but applications
>or animations in response to queries.
>I call it World Wide Computing (WWC): the logical next step in the development
>of the Internet.
>
>"John D. Pritchard" said:> > If there are currently no formal
specifications for a robot communication
>"John D. Pritchard" said:> > protocol, I'd be very interested in
talking to people who are wishing to
>"John D. Pritchard" said:> > formulate an open standard.
>"John D. Pritchard" said:>
>"John D. Pritchard" said:> some small DTDs should be developed to get
things rolling.
>"John D. Pritchard" said:>
>As said before, I don't believe DTDs would be the right way to go. I'd
>be interested to hear from those, that have tried to use DCE or NEO to
>create communicating WWW services.
>
>I hope, that some of the things I have said, is useful.
>If not, I apologize for wasting precious bandwidth :-;
>
>Harry "Munir Basha" Behrens Tel.: +81-3-3812-2111 #6752
>PhD candidate +81-3-3814-4251 #6763
>Tanaka Lab
>Dept. of Electrical Engineering e-mail: behrens@mtl.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
>University of Tokyo
>
>The Robustness Principle (RFC 1123):
> "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send"
>
>
Well as robots, which are essentially http clients at this point, they could
have to meet at an intermediary http server to exchange information. At
this point they could perform standard http client-server calls to poll each
other and exchange information. In this way, current bots could be
implemented with interrobot communication without major retrofit.
Another interesting new application of http robots will be as the use as
robot avatars in multi-user 3D worlds. Some of these programs are in use now.
Just my two cents I guess, but hopefully we can expand on Behrins idea of
WWC. By establishing robust intermediary standards it should be possible to
facilitate interrobot communication.
Have a nice day,
Ross Finlayson
http://www.tomco.net/~raf/fc