The BOW Tech Stack
Taxonomy of components comprising the BOW Technology Stack
BOW Engine
| BOW Engine | A collective name for the BOW Robot API, the BOW Comms, and the BOW API. |
| BOW Data Messages | A set of information messages available to communicate all sensory data and motor control functionality. |
| BOW Comms | A specialised communications layer based on WebRTC that provides ultra low latency data exchange between the BOW Robot API and the BOW API in the form of the BOW Data Messages. |
| BOW API | Consists of the functions (and language specific wrappers) that define how to connect and control a robot and includes the BOW Data Messages. It is designed for creating Applications that can simultaneously connect to one or more robots. The functions include the Universal Commands. |
| BOW Robot API | Consists of the functions (and language specific wrappers) that define how to receive and send data to the BOW API and includes the BOW Data Messages. It is designed for creating BOW Robot Drivers. |
The BOW SDK
| BOW SDK | Made up of the BOW API and a collection of tools, and utility applications for developing robotics applications. These are the BOW Hub, the BOW Simulator(s), the BOW Robot Descriptions and BOW Insight. |
| The Universal Commands | The three main functions of the BOW API that maximally simplify robotics. Connect, Get and Set. |
| BOW Hub | A developer utility, part of the BOW SDK, that removes the need for username and password to be hard coded into an Application. It also simplifies the rapid selection of robots from a list of robots that are online and available. |
| BOW Simulators | Off the shelf simulators that are customised to simulate a virtual world populated with BOW Robot Descriptions. |
| BOW Insight | A utility application for the real time control and visualisation of robots. |
| BOW Applications | Standalone software programs that use the BOW API. |
The BOW DDK
| BOW DDK | Made up of the BOW Robot API and a collection of tools, and utility applications for developing BOW Robot Drivers. These are the BOW URDF Pipeline and the BOW Rapid Robot Prototyper. |
| BOW Robot Schema | A hardware agnostic data structure made up of a kinematic tree, and sensors and actuators aggregated by channel, roughly corresponding with a form factor. |
| BOW Robot Descriptions | A specific implementation of the schema corresponding to an individual robot model. |
| BOW Robot Drivers | A hardware specific translation of sensory data and motor control into the BOW Robot Schema. |
| BOW URDF Pipeline | A utility for converting a URDF description into a BOW Robot Description. |
| BOW Rapid Robot Prototyper | A graphical application that allows the user to integrate different BOW Robot Descriptions. |
Robot Management
| BOW Portal | A website for managing your account, subscriptions, and access to your robots and assets. |
A Robot Driver is a special instance of a BOW Process where the computation happens in the environment.