= Robot Brain Project = http://www.robotgroup.net/eric/BrainJeffGlenn1.jpg Jeff and Glenn working on The Linux Rack http://www.robotgroup.net/eric/SunStack.jpg The NetBSD Stack == About == The Robot Brain: The Robot Brain project is large project with the goal of providing a platform to test various robot control theories. It is in it's early stages but conisists of an ever growing number of Linux and NetBSD based computers networked together. The collection of rack mount computers are strapped together via ethernet to form the fixed brain for various mobile robot bases. We are currently working on getting "agent" based software running on this "Society" of machines. The brain team is convinced that interesting things can be done with the concept of "agents" introduced by Marvin Minsky in his book "Society of Mind". We need all the help we can get and many friends and members of The Robot Group have already contributed greatly to the project and we owe them our thanks. GlennCurrie is the project leader. == Project Status == December 11, 2002 - CD-ROM burner was installed and baseline backup of project software was placed on CD-ROM. NFS and CVS have been configured and are operational. Work was done on several of the multi-port serial port cards. Some success was acheived but it was determined that the custom (78 pin to 8 DB-25 pin) cable we have, was not designed to work with the card we have installed. The pin out of the cable is available but fabricating the cable would involve hours of work. Other multi-port cards that have been donated are being tested. Most are very old and data on them is hard to find on the net - lots of data on much newer cards is available. Jeff suggests installing Java test and verification utilities as the next major software project. The agent software makes extensive use of Java and therefore being able to verify that Java is working as required will help developers trace and fix bugs. December 4, 2002 - Every project needs a plan, so the team members each took an action item to work on. Glenn will be getting the HP CD burner installed on the cluster and helping to set up NFS up on the nodes. Jeff will be setting up CVS and working on NFS. Eric will be installing the 8-port serial board. November 20, 2002 - The Goodwill computer store had a barrel full of free power cords. This was our lucky day! We picked up enough of them to allow all of the Sparc NetBSD systems to all be powered up at the same time. November 14, 2002 - Jeff was able to iron out the difficulties with the speech agent. It now freely speaks whatever is entered via the agent GUI. November 13, 2002 - Jeff got the first agent program running under the FIPA-OS! It successfully loaded up the dectalk Java library and was able to make the Dec''''''Talk say "foo" before it became unresponsive, but it is a great start! Eric got 8 servos on the Babbling Head working and hooked up a terminal on the monitor port of the Dec''''''Talk to watch the phoneme speech coming out. Glenn was able to repair the Mini SSC with some fancy solder work and successfully got his ruggedized laptop patched into the mobile platform drive electronics. November 10, 2002 - EricLundquist worked on the [http://www.robotgroup.net/brooks/babblinghead.jpg Babbling Head]. Replaced 4 burned out servos. Reworked the Mini SSC II servo controller. Hopefully the [http://www.robotgroup.net/brooks/babblinghead.jpg Babbling Head] will put a face to the voice of the [http://www.robotgroup.net/eric/DecTalk1.jpg DecTalk]. November 7, 2002 - JeffHurst got the FIPA-OS installed on Sybil6. November 6, 2002 - EricLundquist got the [http://www.robotgroup.net/eric/DecTalk1.jpg DecTalk] Java Linux interface working on Sybil6. October 28, 2002 - GlennCurrie brought up Sybil2 and got the [http://www.robotgroup.net/eric/DecTalk1.jpg DecTalk] mounted on the Linux rack. He also got the monitors, keyboards, power, etc all nicely mounted on the main rack. JeffHurst got Java 1.4.1 loaded on Sybil6. October 27, 2002 - GlennCurrie got Sybil1 up and running with Red Hat Linux 8.0. October 23, 2002 - GlennCurrie got the two UPS' for the Linux rack rebuilt and hooked up. We now have clean power! == References == The Source Forge home of the FIPA_OS http://fipa-os.sourceforge.net/ Professor Michael Wooldridge's homepage http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~mjw/ Especially 'My WWW links'. It is extensive. Professor Nick Jennings's homepage http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~nrj/ Intelligent Agents: Theory and Practice, Michael Wooldridge & Nicholas R. Jennings. Knowledge Engineering Review 10(2), 1995. The copy on Wooldridge's site (http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~mjw/pubs/ker95.pdf) is much more clear than that found at http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/cs. And there is an HTML version, as well: http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~mjw/pubs/ker95/ker95-html.html Marvin Minsky Bio http://education.yahoo.com/search/be?lb=t&p=url%3Am/minsky__marvin The Society of Mind from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0671657135/102-1116262-3243342