The computer revolution may have just self-aborted. Computing is still as unfriendly as ever with the learning curve getting ever longer. PC has become essentially a multimedium typewriter. The Internet is turning into a centralized, monopolistical information/entertainment hub.

Is it really so hard to get rid of the learning curve in computers? Why can't PC yet embark on the task of solving all the problems of the world, now it has the power of the supercomputers? Could we possibly get out under the syndicatorial way of the Internet and get every PC user to participate in the emerging global link?

Well, let's go back to the granddaddy of computers, the abacus. But this time we are going to make the abacus robotic. That is, making it as powerful as it is simple to use.

In a nutshell, ROBACUS represents how best humans and computers can interact. The approach is to let the computer lead the interaction after the human initiates it. This is much more easily achieved than the conventional practice of having the human lead all of the time.

ROBACUS's goal is to build an automated engineering analysis environment supported by software generating tools and task performing robots. Once users customize this environment to satisfy all their needs, routine practices such as referencing a file name, using a command and editing a program or data will become things of the past.

ROBACUS consists of three functional loops. A small inner maintenance loop performs the diagnosis and editing of software. A large outer analysis loop performs the problem analyses, which include input preparation, program execution and output analysis. The third loop is simply a streamlined unix environment. In a way, ROBACUS is working hard to make this loop go away.

In order to provide conversational-mode input preparation and output analysis, two additional capabilities have been developed in the analysis loop. They are for the generation of conversational-mode preprocessors and postprocessor using software automation techniques.

A unique advantage of ROBACUS is its capability to store and share information which it receives from its users. Everytime a ROBACUS user execute a task, ROBACUS gains knowledge and experience from him and stores it for all future users who might also want to make use of the information.

The major cornerstones of ROBACUS are natural language programming, software robot and OUTERNET. They are described below.

I. NATURAL LANGUAGE PROGRAMMING

Natural language programming is designed to be the most logically natural way a user writes computer programs. Of course this means shifting all the difficult tasks to the computer. Utmost in this are the logical flow of coding construction and bookkeeping of variables. The end result is letting the computer lead the conversation on what the user wants to create.

The natural language programming program is designed to transplant into the human user the comparable computer capabilities of speed, memory, discipline and impartiality.

II. SOFTWARE ROBOTS

Software robots are simply recordings of interactions between user and computer. But what makes these recordings special is their ability to be played back in a controlled manner. Playing back these recordings is equivalent to making the robots carry out the tasks documented by the recordings.

Once sufficient user knowledge and experience are gathered in the form of recordings, the computing environment provided by ROBACUS will appear to be fully manned by robots capable of executing any analysis that users request.

III. OUTERNET

OUTERNET is the NET for all home PCs. Instead of being left OUT of the Internet as over-qualified monitors, now ROBACUS can turn all such PCs into productive members of OUTERNET. As only to be expected, OUTERNET supports a new World Wide Web of software robots.

ROBACUS connects all home PCs by making them personal servers that can be awakened by remote users and auto-connect themselves into the OUTERNET, via the Internet.

The Internet is where we all have to reach in to access it; the OUTERNET reach out to us. On the OUTERNET, the WWW of robots addresses the issue of how-to rather than what-is.

IV. TRACK RECORDS

ROBACUS began its life as a supercomputing nuclear analysis environment. ROBACUS had been used in the licensing of the shipping casks for the degraded fuel of the Three-Mile-Island(TMI) nuclear power plant. The fully automated supercomputer version of a piping-stress analysis package in ROBACUS was extensively used in the analysis and licensing of the safety-relief-valve problems which caused the TMI accident.

The big technical breakthrough, in a project that was not something to be proud of, was the criticality design of the nuclear space reactor for the Star War project. Robacus demonstrated that software automation is required for complex projects, not only for its efficiency, but also its reliability.

Since then, ROBACUS has reformed itself to work only on peaceful use of nuclear energy. It has tried ,at Gulf States Utilities, Taiwan Power Company and Pacific Gas & Electric, to automate their respective departments of nuclear analysis. But each time the technical staff could only use the automation tools, but not maintain and develop them, being foreign to the new concepts of code generation and software robot. Still, ROBACUS' successful executions of all the problems encountered fully demonstrated its technical maturity.

With the emerging of the gighz PC, ROBACUS has been ported from supercomputers, via workstations, to PCs. In the last three years, the very processes of how ROBACUS was developed has been "taught" to the computer by regenerating the software application tools with the natural-language programing program. The series of steps were recorded as software robots to allow everyone to understand and contribute to ROBACUS. This should remove the obstacle that prevented the technical staff from getting aboard ROBACUS in the past.

The natural-language programming program has been extended from specialized nuclear applications to general everyday needs. A reflexometer for visual training of pingpong reflexes, a pingpong match analyzer similar to but much more complex than the analyzer for televised tennis matches, a superminicomputer design scheduling program and some rudimentary animation capabilities are among the software programs ROBACUS has generated.

Now as ROBACUS is ready for the real world, it is used to document itself in generating this webpage.