Beyond the Web: Excavating the Real World via Mosaic

This paper describes a Mosaic server that allows users to "leave the Web" and interact with the real world. An interdisciplinary team of anthropologists, computer scientists and electrical engineers collaborated on the project, desigining a system which consists of a robot arm fitted with a CCD camera and a pneumatic system. By clicking on an ISMAP control panel image, the operator of the robot directs the camera to move vertically or horizontally in order to obtain a desired position and image. The robot is located over a dry-earth surface allowing users to direct short bursts of compressed air onto the surface using the pneumatic system. Thus robot operators can "excavate" regions within the environment by positioning the arm, delivering a burst of air, and viewing the image of the newly cleared region. This paper describes the system in detail, addressing critical issues such as robot interface, security measures, user authentication, and interface design. We see this project as a feasibility study for a broad range of WWW applications. Goals of the Project WWW and Mosaic[1]-like servers provide a multi-media interface that spans all major platforms. Thousands of sites have been set up in the past year. Our goal with this project was to provide public access to a teleoperated robot, thus allowing users to reach beyond the digital boundaries of the WWW. Such a system should be robust as it must operate 24 hours a day and it should be low in cost (we had an extremely limited budget). It is worth noting that the manufacturing industry uses the same criteria to evaluate robots for production. Thus our experience with RISC robotics (see below) proved helpful. Our secondary goal was to create an evolving WWW site that would encourage repeat visits by users http://web.archive.org/web/20050410122105/archive.ncsa.uiuc.... 1 of 12