Networked open robot system

The promised future of open robot system combined with computer network is discussed. The speed of information flow in production systems, enterprises and society has been accelerated by introducing rapid progress of information technology. There still exists barriers in the production site where machines for manufacturing and robots are used. Open system in factories is hot topic to break the barriers. From the historical review of computer system, it can be concluded that the key issues are (1) unified architecture, (2) separation of hardware and software, (3) standardization and/or defactization, (4) downsizing, (5) distributed processing connected by network. All those have push the market to change from hardware to software oriented one. To develop open robot system, standard/defact (1) computational platform and operating environment, (2) I/O interface and protocol, (3) task level description are essential. Those can help us to utilize low-cost PC sensing systems and to exchange information from site to site. After this, big software package market for robot task can be created. The concept of `Cyber Robotics' in which multimedia and network technologies combined with open robot system, is proposed. Cyber robotics helps us to extract human tacit knowledge about task and enable us to handle and re-utilize them. These features accelerate information flow between various systems and locations, and are expected to bring benefits for both users and vendors by drastically reducing cost for start-up, operation and maintenance.