ROBACUS is a robotic abacus. It will evolve into a robot that does all the computing for its users.

ROBACUS performs computing with software robots that possess the necessary knowledge. Such knowledge is absorbed into ROBACUS with a natural-language programming program powered by an intelligence engine that guide human users to inputting their knowledge and experience into the computer in a way that are both compatible with computer and natural to human.

The building blocks of ROBACUS are:

1. Natural Language

This is where the labor of thinking by the human is shifted to the computer. Its naturalness consists mostly the most natural way of expression that the computer can guide the users into communicating their knowledge to the computer. A secondary feature of the naturalness is the use of a standardized abbreviated set of English, especially custom tailored to non-English speaking people of the world -- a kind of universal language for computing.

2. Software Robots

These are replayable verbatim recordings of the interaction between the users and ROBACUS. As all interactions are in natural language, software robots can be considered as functional documentations in that then can perform the exact tasks that they describe.

3. User Interface

This is the interface to the users that profess to avoid all learning curves for normal users. For developers, it should limit the learning process to one hour, involving the following items:

(1) Memorize the internal language of ROBACUS in the form of naming convention of files and variables -- the same way that ROBACUS itself automatically names the files and variables it creates.

(2) Learning 30 rules of Fortran

(3) Familiar with about 100 c-language, X-windows, unix and other language rules and commands.

4. Robotic Editor

This is an editor that run on robots -- executable external robot files that contains basic commands that are recognizable by the editor but never really used by the users(since they require the awkward simultaneous press of the Ctrl key). Further more the pressing of the Enter key are mostly eliminated for single key command entries by reserving the 1st column of the screen as the zero the column of the text(which start on column 2 of the screen).

A magical feature of this editor is the searching of whatever string a user type into the editor. This feature may have its most shining moment in illustrating the user-accomodating spirit of the editor.

The goal of the editor is to do away with editting. This can be done by extensively calling the editor from within other programs to execute specific editting robots.

5. Auto Debugger

All the experience of debugging will be programmed into this debugger. By extensive use of editting and other robots, this debugger are intended to ultimately keep ROBACUS running smoothly on its own.

The specs of all the above building blocks are also provided.

2.8 NATURAL LANGUAGE SPECS

2.9 SOFTWARE ROBOT SPECS

2.10 NAMING CONVENTION SPECS

2.11 FORTRAN SPECS

2.12 USE INTERFACE SPECS

2.13 EDITOR SPECS

2.14 DIAGNOSER SPECS

2.15 DATA FILE LINK SPECS

2.16 COMPUTER ENGLISH WORDS

2.17 UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE FOR COMPUTING

2.18 SPACE NUCLEAR DESIGN ANALYSIS

back to homepage