Proposed Group: Browsers and Robotics Community Group
The Browsers and Robotics Community Group has been proposed by Satoru Takagi:
This community group will be intended to discuss the applications of web browsers as the computer for controlling robots (robotics in other words). And it will be also intended to feed back knowledge obtained from this discussion to standardization activity about Web of Things.
What kinds of values are contained in using a Web browser not only in drawing graphical user interface but also in controlling and manipulating robots, and what kinds of difficulties and problems are there in that case? To search their answers may become the driving force of this activity.
As an example, there may be the following questions in the discussion. Is a case applying a Web browser as a simple controller of the robots which does not have UI such as screens or the pointing devices still meaningful? For example, connectivity with web services and interlocking operation between robots (Swarm Robotics via web) may be one of its values. Is it possible to relate a graphical user interface of HTML to interactive and physical user interface of the robots? Is it meaningful? As an example, a relation between a physical push button and ‘input’ type=”button” element in the HTML may deserve considering. Are cases using relatively low-level interface used in many robots such as PWM of the motor, digital or analog signal interfaces, I2C, SPI, UART and GPIOs by the application on the web browsers meaningful? Is real-time computing at the same level as RTOS feasible on the web browser-based general-purpose computing environments?
Initial related activity is Mozilla Factory Open Hardware Project.
You are invited to support the creation of this group. Once the group has a total of five supporters, it will be launched and people can join to begin work. In order to support the group, you will need a W3C account.
Once launched, the group will no longer be listed as “proposed”; it will be in the list of current groups.
If you believe that there is an issue with this group that requires the attention of the W3C staff, please send us email on site-comments@w3.org
Thank you,
W3C Community Development Team
