Good morning ladies and gentlemen,

(1)

I am Andreas Hofmeier and I want to present my Final Year Project to
you. My project runs under the title "Communication between Robots
and a Computer via the Internet".

I want to take this opportunity to thank my supervisor, Dr. Chen, for
all his help.

(2)

Then I want to go over to general aspects of my Project. The aim of my
project is, to develop a software platform in form of a Network Library
on Linux for the Remote Control of Robots via the Internet. This
Network Library will be demonstrated on a real Robot. During my
Project I explore(d) the feasibility of using the Internet to control
robots.

Why I do this Project?

Well, I am interested in this area, I am interested in Linux, Network
and Robots -- so that is my Project. And the Second reason is, that I
want to provide a simple platform for further Projects.

(3)

Now I talk about the network aspects of my Project. The Internet is
organised in packets. That can be compared with the postal service.

(Because of the segmentation you could not sent a whole book
at once in this example. You have to send each page of the book in one
letter. This is job of the Network Library)

When you go to the post office and hand in your letter, you ask the
post clerk: How long will the letter take? A possible answer is: Well,
it will take maybe three days. And this "maybe" is the problem. Even
if ninety procent of the letters will at their destination after three
days, there is no guarantee. It can take a week, you do not know.

(In terms of networks this pro)

To analyse this problem, which is called the Random Time Delay, I
conduct several measurements. I send data packages from my server to
servers all around the world. The first point I discovered is, that
the basic time delay depends on the distance between the
servers. Between 8am and 8pm the time delay increases to very hight
values. This was caused by the local school and university network
through which my server is connected to the Internet. During the
school hours the network was overloaded. To prove this assumption I
repeated the measurement during the holiday period. During this test
the time delay was constant low.

(4)

Now I explain something about the robot part of my Project. There are
two major modes to control a robot:

In the Direct Control you say "start moving" to the robot, and the
robot will start moving. Then you say "stop" and the robot stops.

By using the Supervisory Control a target is given to the robot. The
robot drives to this target and stops there, if no further commands
are received.

The most important advantage of the Supervisory Control is, that no
dangers occur if the connection breaks down (or is to slow), after a
command is transmitted. In the Direct Control the robot will moving,
and moving and moving... because it do not receives a stop
command. And for this reason, it was decided to use the Supervisory
controll for my demonstration.

As you can see here, this is the Basic Structure of my project. You
type in you command into the User Interface on the Server side. The
User Interface will read you inputs from the keyboard and mouse and
hands it over to the Server Control Program which evaluates your
inputs and translates its into computer understandable form. This data
will be given to the Network Library, which takes care about the
transmission of this data to the Network Library on the Robot's
side. This Network Library receives the data and hand it over to the
Robot Control Program, which interprets the date and controls the
Robot itself.

And this is the way in which your inputs are transmitted to the Robot.

(5)

Now I give you an overview about the current status of my project .

What is done?

The Network Library is implemented now.

An example robot can be controlled through this Library

What remains?

The Documentation has to be completed.

The Report has to be finished.

And some disfigurements has to be fixed.


Now I want to finish my presentation with some Conclusions:

The major challenges during this project was for me, that I have to
Document my work well. This is one of the most important parts of the
software development -- the Documentation. The second challenge for me
was to write a Log-book and this in English.

During this project I learnt that it is very helpful to have a
plan. Not for the purpose to do all the work exactly point for point
after the plan -- no! But you get an overview; You do not forget
things so easily or miss-estimate the project duration.

Thank you very much for your attention and you interest in my
project. I am gald to answer all possible questions, which are arisen.