Call for Participation in Browsers and Robotics Community Group

The Browsers and Robotics Community Group has been launched:

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 group will not publish specifications.

In order to join the group, you will need a W3C account.

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.

The group must now choose a chair. Read more about how to get started in a new group and good practice for running a group.

We invite you to share news of this new group in social media and other channels.

If you believe that there is an issue with this group that requires the attention of the W3C staff, please email us at site-comments@w3.org

Thank you,
W3C Community Development Team