Robots

[David Engle]

The recent flurry of activity in response to the sprint contest rules
(in particular the Human participation part) has got me to thinking.

How about a rule change to specifially allow a "Robot only" station
in a contest?  Pick a contest: domestic, Sweepstakes, sprint; 
international, CQWW, IARU.  Then lobby the committee to allow a robot 
only station.  

At the moment I can only see a CW or RTTY robot station.  This is 
only because I can't figure out how to have a voice recognition for 
a SSB robot with today's technology.  Potential rules for the robot 
station entry could be along the following lines:

1) The robot should have a unique identifier appended to the
call sign.  e.g., /rbt or /r.

2) The robot is required to be available for QSO at least 50%
of the contest time period.  (Make the robot robust but still allow
a human to be nearby monitoring its progress [or for break down].)

3) The robot is not allowed to spend more than 25% of its "available 
for QSO" time CQing.  (Keep from having 2,000 robots gobbling up the 
whole band doing nothing but CQing).

4) The robot is required to initiate, complete, and log each 
contact without human intervention.

5) Within the robots ability to discern individual call signs the
robot will not [band] dupe other contestants. (i.e., the robot won't
work the same station each pass through the band when in S&P mode.)

6) Human intervention is allowed to: set power levels, rotate antennas,
decide when to initiate band changes, and start and terminate operation
of the robot.

7) A control operator is required in attendance to insure compliance
with national communications authority rules and regulations.

At least initially the contest organizers could suggest an exchange
for the robot contacts.  This would increase the initial success
rate for the robots as they could extract the required exchange more
easily, than without a pro forma QSO.

That ought to be enough to start the ball rolling.  I am sure these
tenative rules could be refined.  Everything else should be allowed.
For instance, the non-CQing time could be spent following the local
packet announcements. (Now I'd like to see the filter set that would
extract the signal and then the exchange for that one!).

There are lots of technological challenges contained in this type of
operation.  At least initially, robots would work best in less crowded
bands.  Then Digital Signal Processing would come up to speed to help
in the filtering requirements to separate signals.  Which would then
push the need for Artifical intelligence to extract non-standard 
exchanges and non-machine sent CW.  We have desk top computing 
resources, now, that can address these needs.  We just haven't put
them to the application.

What do you think?

Regards, Dave
 
David Engle, KE6ZE - engle at wdl.loral.com - 408/473-4419 @ work 
Facts, what facts?  I don't got to show you no stinking facts.  
These are opinions expressed here.  




>From Fred Hopengarten" <lectroid!jjmhome!k1vr!k1vr at uunet.uu.net  Thu Jul 29 14:14:28 1993
From: Fred Hopengarten" <lectroid!jjmhome!k1vr!k1vr at uunet.uu.net (Fred Hopengarten)
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1993 09:14:28 EDT
Subject: Two-Wire Beverages
Message-ID: <2c57cd3c.k1vr at k1vr.UUCP>

On Wed, 28 Jul 93 11:28:16 EDT, "GC-DSTI"
<waltk at PICA.ARMY.MIL> wrote:
> Has anyone ever built or used a two wire beverage?

W1FV has built a Misek Beverage, and likes it, but says,
mysteriously, that there are some things he learned about
building it along the way.

If two directions is your aim, think about running
inexpensive CATV RG-59 (100% foil, 60% braid) and feeding
both ends.  That's what I do.  N1RC and I described it in a
feature article in 73 magazine in 1983.  Yes, this means
that you may actually have a feedline which is longer than
your Beverage, but at 160 and 80, losses in RG-59 are pretty
damn low.
-- 
Fred Hopengarten K1VR
Six Willarch Road, Lincoln, MA 01773-5105
home + office telephone:  617/259-0088 (FAX on demand)
"Big antennas, high in the sky, are better than small ones, low."


>From Fred Hopengarten" <lectroid!jjmhome!k1vr!k1vr at uunet.uu.net  Thu Jul 29 14:08:42 1993
From: Fred Hopengarten" <lectroid!jjmhome!k1vr!k1vr at uunet.uu.net (Fred Hopengarten)
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1993 09:08:42 EDT
Subject: Failure of 1/2" CATV
Message-ID: <2c57cbe0.k1vr at k1vr.UUCP>

On Tue, 27 Jul 1993 22:50:26 -0400 (EDT), k5zd at world.std.com
wrote:
> Does anyone have experience with 1/2" CATV hardline
breaking down?

I have 1/2 inch foam cable TV hardline feeding my 4 el 40
meter vertical phased array, my 2 el 40 Cushcraft yagi at 90
feet, and my 2 el 80 meter vertical phased array and have
never seen signs (but what would they be?) of "breakdown."
On the other hand, I've never had high SWR (>2:1).

I use two other half-inch lines, but at low power (2 m
packet, and 220 local DX machine).  You can't beat the cost
effectiveness of cable TV hardline at those frequencies, and
I mkae no attempt at SWR matching for these two lines.


-- 
Fred Hopengarten K1VR
Six Willarch Road, Lincoln, MA 01773-5105
home + office telephone:  617/259-0088 (FAX on demand)
"Big antennas, high in the sky, are better than small ones, low."