My undergraduate thesis project, REMOTE, took first place in the recent Java3D programming competition sponsored by Sun Microsystems!

REMOTE, a tele-learning project conducted under the supervision of Dr. John Dill at Simon Fraser University, is a tool to allow students to program a simulated robot manipulator.  More advanced users can even create new robots or robot languages to use with the simulator.

Future plans for REMOTE include integrating a remote server, which will allow a user to upload their completed program to an actual manipulator.  This functionality will be designed to allow students to conduct virtual experiments over the Internet.

The REMOTE simulator is a 100% Pure Java application, and is completely internationalized; anyone who wants to produce a version of REMOTE only needs to translate the Java properties file.  A full download of the current version of the software, full source, and further documentation is available from the REMOTE project site.

Work continues on creating a set of open-source image loaders in Java.  With the release of Java 2, and the extensive new Java2D API, it makes sense that developers might want some way to actually *import* images into their Java2D applications.  Current commercial libraries are prohibitively expensive (~$200 US), making them inaccessible for the average hobby Java programmer.  For more information, see the Java2D Image Decoder Library project site.

Several individuals and groups, including the NCSA, have created Java3D model decoding libraries, most of which are only capable of decoding subsets of the features of popular model formats.  My intent is to assemble these various individual decoders, implement any unimplemented features, repackage the classes to provide a consistent application interface, and assemble the resulting loaders into the Java3D Model Decoder Library.