Share Your Robot | MARS Overview | Quick Start
MARS stands for MakeAffinity Robotics System. MARS is a simple robotics platform that lets anyone share their robots and physical constructs on the world wide web. MARS is divided into two aspects - the Make Editor and Plugin Development.
The Make Editor is an easy to use web-based form-style web page that lets constructors define actions, sequences and control panels that control their constructs over the web without computer programming. A major goal of the Make Editor is to make robotics accessible to the masses with minimal technical know-how. The Make Editor uses plugins to support your devices and systems to achieve this.
MARS is an open system that anyone can extend through developing device plugins. MARS communicates to all devices through a straightforward plugin API. Currently, plugins are written in .NET (C#, C , VB, Ada, you name it). Plugins allow constructors without computer programming knowledge to use the Make Editor to control their robots easily. For example, the plugins for the Lego Mindstorms NXT allows any person to control their Mindstorms NXT robot using the Make Editor without computer programming knowledge. Users of the Make Editor just need to download and install the appropriate plugin in order to control their Mindstorms NXT robot over the Internet.
MARS works transparently over the web so constructors using the Make Editor or developing plugins do not need to know anything about how to make your robots work over the web. All you need is to do what you already love doing - do robotics.
The following shows you both aspects of MARS.
Share Your Robot | Make Editor | No Computer Programming
Share Your Robot | Universal Plugin | Near Zero Computer Programming
Share Your Robot | Develop Plugins | Support Any Device, Robot & System