GIMnet 2.0 - Enhanced Communication Framework for Distributed Control of Generic Intelligent Machines

This paper describes the new version of the communication framework called GIMnet. GIMnet is essentially a service based communication middleware for building distributed applications. The focus on the architectural design has been on robotic applications. GIMnet provides an abstraction layer over TCP/IP and combines the client-server model with the peer-to-peer model to provide an efficient and yet flexible interface for communication. From an application point-of-view, GIMnet provides a virtual private network (VPN) in which all participating nodes may communicate point-to-point using simple name designators for addressing. We present the changes to the original system as well as their justifications. In addition, an extensive set of performance test results is presented and analyzed.