community.java.net - Robotics Community

Welcome to the Robotics community

/ Fresh News - 2007 Aug 21 /

TrackBot runtime library and example code is located in the new (2007 Aug 21) TrackBotCode incubator project. Autonomous ObstacleAvoider code is coming up in new commits in the jswarm project area.

New SunSPOT projects are committed in the SunSPOT Robotics subproject incubator area. There are also some new SPOT projects in the main incubator.

// New Products of Interest - 2007 Aug 20

The Ugobe Pleo is a prehistoric robotic dinosaur which has been under development for several years. Created by Caleb Chung, a former mime, Pleo is claimed to have especially natural-looking movements (apparently we have witnesses to how prehistoric creatures moved...) and its interactive capabilities. It's about US$350 and is shipping now. Check out this Wired article and YouTube video for more details.

The Japanese Plen 'robot' - see this YouTube video - apparently has no gyros, sensors, or autonomous capability. Just very precise and clever software. More at the Plen website (all in Japanese only).

// Semi-Fresh News

StarLogo is now Open Sourced which may open up some interesting robotic possibilities. (StarLogo is written in Java.) StarLogo is a massively parallel 2D simulator which is especially good at decentralized experimentation. Bruce may be using it in a pilot program at a Salt Lake City elementary school this fall. Could there be some collaboration between StarLogo and Greenfoot?

// JavaOne 2007

The TrackBot Hands On Lab 7230 at JavaOne went flawlessly, thanks mostly to tireless effort by Eric Arseneau. Now we want to carry on the work with some new SunSPOT-TrackBot-swarm projects which will be appearing here soon.

We also plan to develop an educational initiative for TrackBot and SunSPOT, starting with the GreenFoot open source project.

JavaOne is only a week away. Check out BOF-1891 SPOTBot: Turning a Sun SPOT into a Rugged and Affordable Mobile Robot, LAB-7230: Project Sun SPOT, Robots, and Java Technology on Wednesday, and Paul Perrone's TS-1519: All About Java Technology-Based Robotics. And look for us in the java.net and SUN SPOT pavilions.

// Robotics Community News

2007 Jan 30: There are now mail lists for the robotics community as a whole (not specific to a particular project). These are intended to be general-use mail lists for issues affecting the entire community. Please join or read the complete announcement.

Some benchmarks, relating the current SunSPOT giraffe release to comparable embedded Java systems, show the SunSPOT doing very well, even though it's in a beta state. This bodes very well for the Squawk VM performance.

Our focus is to foster dialog and active, useful robotics projects which take advantage of the easy code sharing, scalability, encapsulation, and other benefits of Java. We welcome your participation and contributions.