The Fiver Project     The Fiver Project was named after the sensitive and intuitive rabbit in the novel Watership Down, by Richard Adams (see It's the Software, Stupid).  

Activities on The Fiver Project are divided into two vital efforts;  (1) the development of robot navigation hardware (internal pre-introduction name; X-Robot) that provides the real world sensor input and mobile platform for an autonomous robot’s implementation, and  (2) the development and evolution of application software and an operating system that supports desktop and web experimentation with the X-Robot’s capabilities, including room map preparation, and path planning and tracking.

Why navigation?  For autonomous mobile robots, navigation is the foundation skill that these robots must possess, without which they can hardly regard themselves as mobile, let alone possessing any serious shot at autonomy in our physical world.

Beyond navigation, there are a series of additional technologies that will provide progressive level of capability to our mechanical friends, until such point that they truly achieve practical autonomy.

• Arm/manipulation

• Communications (data, sound, video)

• Self-learning software

• Seamless man/machine interface

• Motivations and personality

• Task skills (hardware and software)

Our game plan is to address these capabilities one by one.  Our initial and current ongoing task is navigation.

Navigation is one great leap for robot kind.  For with navigation alone, comes important first capabilities for autonomous robots;  (1) errand bots, delivering and retrieving company mail, copies, snacks, parts, supplies, etc., (2) vacuuming bots, (3) sentry bots, and (4) telepresence bots.

Autonomous robot navigation is a robot deciding to go somewhere, then quickly plotting its course and getting there --- efficiently, reliably, directly and without bumping into people, furniture, pets, walls or other robots.

Robot Navigation Hardware     There are four major tasks on the hardware side; the development of  (1) a mobile robot base,  (2) sensors, (3) an on-board computer capability for autonomous navigation and (4) a wireless link to the users own computer for map preparation and robot monitoring.  

If you would like to be notified when the new "X-Robot" is available this fall, send an e-mail to robotchannel@aol.com with "X-Robot" in the subject and the body and you will receive a notification at the e-mail address you sent the request from.

Once the X-Robot is introduced, we will get to work on designing a series of stand-alone Sensor Lab Kits that will feature individual sensors used by the robot, enabling the user to study and experiment with the principles and application of each of those sensors in detail.  Each sensor kit will connect directly to your PC and will come with software that enables you to operate the sensor and display and work with the data produced by the sensor.

Robot Navigation Software     The X-Robot’s software development effort addresses three functional areas;  (1)  web-based software that supports the preparation of rudimentary diagrams of a room’s layout, including furniture, walls and doorways, (2)  simulation software that supports simulated path planning and tracking for a robot, and (3)  robot operating software that is both the robot’s brain and that supports monitoring of the robot’s navigation data and progress through a room.

                                               The Water Language

The foundation of X-Robot’s software is being developed in the Water language by Clear Methods, Inc., to take particular advantage of object-oriented programming, XML and web services, all in one.  In the short term, Water's versatility with XML, HTML and web services will seamlessly render the robot a web robot.   In the long term, the web and Water provide and support a natural networked environment which is especially well suited for the integration of robots with (1) our existing networks, (2) with future networks of resources developed expressly for robots and (3) with other robots.

The X- Robot has significant multi-tier software requirements, from interfacing with users at their desktops, laptops and PDA’s, to communicating from these platforms to the robot’s primary operating system, to the robot OS controlling all sensor and affective capability on the robot.  In addition, because of the building block nature of a robot’s architecture and functional components, as well as its knowledge, skills and ability to interact with its environment, object oriented programming and data management is the only way to approach the robot’s software and data requirements.

These requirements, combined with the future of the robot as an “internet appliance” connected to our home and office networks and the web, point very naturally to an n-tier universally integrated software language such as Water has been designed to be --- universally integrated in the sense that it supports HTML, programming logic, object orientation, XML data transfer and representation, web services and web server deployment all in one package.  If Water did not exist, we would have to invent it.

You can follow the evolution of the software below.  When the web-based map preparation and simulation capabilities are completed, site visitors will be able to work with them online.  Room maps and path planning prepared on the web will be downloadable to X-Robots for testing in the real world.  X-Robot’s robot operating system, plus the mapping and simulation software, will be shipped to registered buyers of the X-Robot, once available.

X-ROBOT SOFTWARE STATUS

             Software                                  Status                           Status Date

            Room mapping                          Pre-start                        7-31-02

Simulation                                 Pre-start                       7-31-02

Operating software                     Pre-start                       7-31-02

Self-Learning Software     Steve Grand, author of Creation: Life and How to Make It, feels that artificial life and intelligence can only evolve out of interaction with the world (or, at least, his Creatures Game virtual world).  “Unless an organism receives sensory feedback from its environment and can also alter that environment, it cannot close the loop that makes learning and therefore intelligence possible.” 

Once we have an X-Robot able to regularly and reliably choose his destination, plot a path and get himself there --- over and over, as often as he likes, wherever in a mapped space (and in a different way, an unmapped space) he wishes to go, we will have a robot actively interacting with the world and then be ready to begin to apply many of the self-learning software principles Steve Grand writes about --- first in navigation and then in other pursuits.

Please send all comments, suggestions and inquiries regarding the Fiver Project to FiverProject@aol.com.

August 1, 2002