A Proposal of MotionMedia Contents Sharing via Audio and its Application to Network Communication Services

Active entities such as robots will play an important role in the next generation of communication. In this paper, a physical medium that includes the motion of active entities such as robots or physical end-effectors is called MotionMedia and the efficient sharing method of the robot motion control data (called MotionMedia content) is discussed for the realization of robotic communication services. To foster the sharing MotionMedia contents and minimize the overhead of the sharing, the reuse of conventional media for the sharing MotionMedia is an important idea. So, the conceptual idea of MotionMedia contents sharing via audio is proposed. This technique embeds robot control signals in an audio stream with modulation technique. This concept can be explained as the usage of an audio medium as a carrier to convey control data. To test this concept, the authors have developed two implementations of the conceptual idea, which use frequency modulation technique and Dual Tone Multi Frequency as modulation technique respectively and proto-type desktop communication robot systems. These robots have been applied to the conventional communication media such as World Wide Web, E-mail and cell phone. The authors have showed that MotionMedia sharing platform via audio can be realized easily and it is a promising concept.