Society of Robots - Robot Forum

Software => Software => Topic started by: sonictj on August 22, 2009, 10:59:30 PM

Title: how could you control a robot over the internet?
Post by: sonictj on August 22, 2009, 10:59:30 PM

I just got back to UF for the Fall semester, and I received an email from a first robotics team requesting help on a project.  They want to create a robot arm that can be teleoperated over the internet.  They want to use a serial port to communicate to a  PIC MCU, that will directly control the robot's actuators.  I know all about the robot side, but I'm scratching my head on the teleoperation via internet part.  The team also wanted to use java as the software of choice for the internet control side.

Title: Re: how could you control a robot over the internet?
Post by: sonictj on August 22, 2009, 11:22:50 PM

do you think I could use windows xp remote desktop?

this link talks about a web version of remote desktop http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/expert/northrup_03may16.mspx

I think I could use a program to manipulate a serial port, bluetooth etc as if I were doing a normal teleoperated robot project.  If so that ought to be really easy.  Any thoughts?

Title: Re: how could you control a robot over the internet?
Post by: Conscripted on August 23, 2009, 06:05:03 PM

It looks like THIS (http://java.sys-con.com/node/36409) article may help you out. I didn't read the whole thing but it looks like the information you are looking for.

Conscripted

Title: Re: how could you control a robot over the internet?
Post by: Razor Concepts on August 23, 2009, 06:45:11 PM

Looks like the guy who wrote it also wrote the FTJDK it uses, a special jar package specific to their servo controller  :-\

I am also very interested in this, I think I may try to ask on the java forums about it.

Title: Re: how could you control a robot over the internet?
Post by: parallax on August 23, 2009, 07:29:18 PM

Phidgets can be controlled through a network, and one of the languages they support is Java...

Phidgets aren't a quantum leap from what sonictj was describing. Perhaps investigating how they accomplish this might give you some answers (or ideas, anyway),

Here's a link to all of their programming manuals/resources:
http://www.phidgets.com/programming_resources.php

Title: Re: how could you control a robot over the internet?
Post by: Admin on August 25, 2009, 08:33:35 AM

http://www.societyofrobots.com/robotforum/index.php?topic=7019.0

 ;D

Title: Re: how could you control a robot over the internet?
Post by: jaime on August 25, 2009, 08:46:09 AM

Python's pyserial library has serial->tcpip bridges.  Python is awesome, check it out, it may have what you want.

Here is the documentation for pyserial ->

http://pyserial.sourceforge.net/

Scroll down till ya see the examples section.  The only caveat with python is if you're really pumping data through, it can't keep up.  You'll need to use C.

I know from experience :-).

If you need a C program to just `dump` data, I have written (err modified one I found!) one, but it is dependent on cygwin.  It's pretty good stuff for just dumping raw data to stdout.

Good luck!
jaime