Re: Draft Xface for Tool class

[Ken Cline]

SwarmRobots???

I've created a monster!... Just a joke!  

> What do y'all think?  Am I way off Ken's original idea?

No, I think this is real close to what I had in mind.  

One possible difference is that I had limited 
(unnecessarily) the Tool concept by only thinking of it
performing a single, very specific, unalterable task.
Whereas, the SwarmRobot is a more functional in that it
performs any task that conforms to the taskType protocol.

So, should we subclass SwarmRobot and create a multi-tasking
"Robot"?

Ken.


On Thu, 20 Mar 1997, glen e. p. ropella wrote:

> 
> Sven N. Thommesen writes:
>  > Instead of CoolTools, perhaps RoboAgents ?
> 
> Yeah!  RoboAgents actually captures the concept quite
> well.  These agents are motivationally handicapped in
> that they need to be given tasks to do by fully capable
> agents.  This fits the idea of the human/robot relationship
> where robots are generated by humans as specific task-doers
> and don't really have wills of their own.
> 
> 
> Maybe it's time for us to start defining an interface for
> these things.  Whether we call them tools or roboAgents
> doesn't really matter.
> 
> @protocol SwarmRobot <SwarmObject>
> - (id) setToolBox: (id) tb;
> - (id) getToolBox;
> - (id) registerUser: (id) aUser;
> - (id) unregisterUser: (id) aUser;
> - (id) getCurrentUser;
> - (id) getLastToUse;
> - (BOOL) cooptRobot; // true if successful --might destroy previous
>                      //    task and calibration or push new task on 
>                      //    some kind of stack of tasks
> 
> - (BOOL) calibrate: (id) taskType;
> - (BOOL) reset;
> - (BOOL) setSharingTo: (BOOL) onOrOff;
> - (BOOL) setStaticTo: (id) taskType;
> - (BOOL) unsetStatic;
> - (id <TaskType>) getStaticType;
> - (BOOL) getSharing;
> - (id) beginTask: (id) task;
> - (id) stop;
> - (BOOL) canRobotPerformTask: (id) taskType;
> @end
> 
> What do y'all think?  Am I way off Ken's original idea?
> 
> glen
> 

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