GIMnet: infrastructure for distributed control of generic intelligent machines

This paper describes GIMnet, a software infrastructure designed for the distributed control of generic intelligent machines. GIMnet is an abstraction layer built over TCP/IP, and it combines the Client-Server model with the Peer-to-Peer model. The heart of the system is a software called tcpHub, which provides the connections between different applications in the network. The tcpHub is used to create a Virtual Private Network to allow communication through firewalls. Built on top of the VPN is a communication framework library called GIMI, which has been designed to be easy to use and, more importantly, easy to deploy in various usage environments. This paper describes the software and presents results to show its functionality.