I have been working on a smaller version of a robot than Feynman 6, called Feynman Jr. I have also begun to refactor my Java API so that it will work with my new robots.
The summary of my new robot "Feynman Jr" is that he will have his own CPU (another EPIA Mini-IPX that I have used so successfully in past robots. But he will be shorter and smaller than the other robots, small enough to fit comfortably in my truck and light enough so that I can lift.
I have also begin a new API so that I can better have a re-usable architecture then have robot specific classes extend the basic architecture. But this API is not 100% Java, I have had to extend it using C#.
Why C#? Well the main reason is that I use WindowsXP Pro for the robot's operating system. I had tried to use Video 4 Linux a year or so back and got nowhere fast. So even though Windows XP cost some money, it's rather stable for what I want to do, transport Serial and USB Web Camera data over HTTP.
By using HTTP for transport, this opens up any language to be used for processing. So PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, and other languages can be used to access the robot's control and data streams... Which is very, very cool...
