Platform-independent AIBO Navigation through the Internet

The article is about planning and creating a software-pair (a client and a server) that allows safe and platform-independent navigation of the robot-dog named AIBO. The occurring practical problems and their solutions are described as well.
The two softwares were developed side by side. The task of the server is accepting commands from the clients and transmitting them to the AIBO if they are considered to be safe. In addition to that, the server has to accept the AIBO’s camera picture, which is to be forwarded to the clients after compression. The clients have to control the AIBO using the connection with the server, decode and display the compressed camera picture stored in YUV format.
The communication between the softwares is TCP/IP based: the server-AIBO communication uses the R-CODE protocol developed by SONY, while the client-server communication uses a self-developed textual protocol.
The development of the system was made with Borland Delphi and Borland Kylix developing environments, and with the PHP scripting language. The system runs both under Microsoft Windows and under Linux/UNIX operating systems.