Since our first venture to realize the deployment of a set of robots on a network way back in 2001-2002, later christened RobIN, [Kapil & Late Partho Ghosh, 2002-2003] several issues forced us to think of making a generic way of going about it. Two years later, we saw RobIN-II [2003-2004, P.Badapanda], emerge like a phoenix, from our earlier experiences. Microsoft's .NET platform catalysed the conversion from its ashes! Individual robots comprising of a community over a network in RobIN-II lacked a vital requirement for survivability - Sharing of Knowledge - a form of Co-operative Intelligence. While local intelligence could be always programmed within the system hosting the robot or on the on-board controllers, for the community to survive help would have to come from co-operation amongst the robots in the network. Thus evolved the iRobIN framework ... serving solutions and experiences of other robots to those who need them.
The Current Framework in the Pot
iRobIN too is not without drawbacks. Many issues need to be looked into - and as the brew peps up in the pot every taste of the tests carried out alters its recipe. Detethering the robots from the hosts that perform the "Big brother is watching" kind of chore - allowing them to go gypsy by forming their own ad hoc networks - at the same time not straying too far from the civilized world of iRobIN, lest they drift away forever - are some challeneges that remain to be taken! Evolving protocols, similar but simpler (hopefully) than MANET, to cater to Mobile Ad hoc Networks of Robots (MANER) so to empower them (robots) to co-operatively drift across the boundaries of iRobIN in their quest to discover our world, also needs to be investigated.
Interested in knowing about all this? - Click the links in the following sequence and read on -
<Our initial Efforts of Robots on the Net@IITG - RobIN - Kapil & Late Partho Ghosh>
<RobIN-II Augmenting with .NET - Paper Reference - Proceedings of the 1st International Computer Engineering Conference New Technologies for the Information Society ICENCO-2004, Cairo University Cairo, EGYPT, December 27-30, 2004, pp. 625-629>
<iRobIN-Framework for Sharing Knowledge - Paper Reference - Session on Network based Intelligent Control, Proceedings of the 2nd IASTED International Multi-Conference on Automation, Control and Information Technology (ACIT 2005) Novosibirsk, Russia, 20- 24th June 2005, pp.93-98>
<MANER - Hybrids in the iRobIN - Pradip Venkata & M.Saravana - Read and View their work on video>
<A Framework for the Realization of Networked Robotics and Human Beings - Paper Reference - Nair, S.B., Soni., P., Rathore, R.K., International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction, ISARC 2007, September 19th-21st, Kochi, India, pp. 331-338.>
<EZeeCom: Enabling spontaneous social interactions over mobile ad hoc networks - Paper Reference Nair, Shivashankar B., Baruah, R.D., Proceedings of the ACM sponsored International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference 2007, IWCMC 2007, August 12-16, 2007, Turtle Bay Resort, Honolulu, Hawaii, ACM Press, ISBN:978-1-59593-695-0,New York, USA, pp. 559-564.>
<RoboSapienNet – Towards Building A Social Network of Human Beings and Robots - Paper Reference Nair, Shivashankar B., Baruah, R.D., Fourth IEEE International Conference on Wireless and Optical Communications Networks Next Generation Networks July 2-4, 2007, Grand Hyatt Singapore, pp. 1-6.>.
<Wireless Sensor Node Localization and Terrain Mapping using Mobile Robots - Nair, Shivashankar B., Sukumar B., “”, International Conference on Information and Communication Systems, ICICS-2009, Amman, Jordan. 20th Dec. 2009. (Accepted).>
Extensions to the Current Framework in progress
(Click links to know more)
A multi-mobile agent immune based system to serve a multi-robot network.
A Dynamic Emotional Model to pep up such robots!
Acknowledgements
The author of this page acknowledges the support provided by Microsoft Inc. (under their Academic Alliance Scheme) in the initiation of this work (in the infant days of RobIN). Also noteworthy are the efforts of my students [Kapil, Late Partho Ghosh, 2003], [R.Badapanda, 2004], [N. Toppo, 2005], [Venkata Pradip, M.Saravana], ....[rest of them too!] who remain the real contributors to the evolution of RobIN.
More detailed versions of these pages will come up in due course...