Open Standards
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Value of Open Standards
From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard):
"Open standards are publicly available and implementable standards. By allowing anyone to obtain and implement the standard, they can increase compatibility between various hardware and software components, since anyone with the necessary technical know-how and resources can build products that work together with those of the other vendors that base their designs on the standard. Many technical specifications that are sometimes considered standards are proprietary rather than being open, and are only available under restrictive contract terms (if they can be obtained at all) from the organization that owns the copyright for the specification."
Benefits to Roboticists
Robot motions seem to be one critical element of the Humanoid robot environment that would benefit from Open Standards. Every bot has a proprieatry file format and data format for motions. Since they all use servos to move, and all servos can be abstracted as to how they operate, one would think a standard format for motions could be developed. This would then be "translated" by a program that uses the "profile" of the robot and servos you are using to produce motion specs in the appropriate format. Once that is done, we have a standard. Certainly, one would be dreaming to think that the motion files would be 100% usable from bot to bot. However, a high enough level of compatibility could require only minor adjustments for each brand and model.
Benefits to Vendors
Open Standards for motions would allow the creation of a repository of motions that would provide geometrically more "content" for the hardware that the manufacturers are trying to sell.
Interface Standards
Every robot platform should have a basic set of visualization tools for managing robot motions. While we can be sure that Microsfot is moving in that direction, we do not want to be a slave to their Marketing clout. Look where it got us on the desktop.
- a graphical tool to define the Degrees of Freedom of your robot, generating Robot DOF files
- Robot DOF definition files that are universally readable by all bot control programs
- a graphical tool to view a motion file to show the approximate positions of your servos based on your Robot DOF file
- a graphical tool to drag and move the limbs of the bot to create motions, one the screen, and echoed to the bot
