This community group will discuss the applications of web browsers as the computer for controlling robots (robotics, in other words). And it will be also intended to feedback 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?
An initial related activity is the Mozilla Factory Open Hardware Project.
Furthermore, this group may publish specifications based on those knowledge such as webGPIO, webI2C API and so on.
Group's public email, repo and wiki activity over time
Note: Community Groups are proposed and run by the community. Although W3C hosts these conversations, the groups do not necessarily represent the views of the W3C Membership or staff.
Using these, you will be able to build headless applications on low-power board computers like the Raspberry Pi Zero.
There are also CHIRIMEN tutorials for several models (Raspberry Pi, Pi Zero, micro:bit, ty51822r3) that have been put together as a development environment. The tutorial homepage is here.
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.
This is a community initiative. This group was originally proposed on 2014-10-21 by Satoru Takagi. The following people supported its creation: Satoru Takagi, Michael Petychakis, Futomi Hatano, koichi takagi, wakasa masao, Naoki Sekiguchi. W3C’s hosting of this group does not imply endorsement of the activities.
browserobo/
