Patent ID: 9235681
Filing Date: 2016-01-12
CPC Classification: G16H,H04L

Claim Text:
1. A method of control and data exchange between autonomous devices comprising: receiving, from each of a plurality of autonomous devices, a device specification, the device specification defining a device identifier, receivable commands and device outputs; storing, for each device of the plurality of autonomous devices, the device specification in a common location accessible to each of the autonomous devices for asynchronous access; publishing at least a portion of the stored device specification for receipt by at least one other of the autonomous devices; and transmitting, based on the published device specification, a message including a command or a device output from one of the autonomous devices to a destination device of the autonomous devices, the transmission being an unscripted exchange initiated by the transmitting autonomous device for receipt by the destination device based on the published device specification from the destination device, the device specification including a plurality of output fields defining the device outputs and a plurality of control fields defining the receivable commands, the output fields and control fields having a common format independent of the destination device, further comprising transmitting the commands and device specification over a common bus readable by all connected devices, wherein each device reads and interprets based on an identifier rather than visibility of the command, the message including a device identifier designating the recipient device, the device identifier configured to be read by the recipient and compared to the identification of the recipient; specifying a constant length for the device identifier, output fields and control fields independent of conditional fields in the message, such that the message remains a constant length regardless of conditional commands and optional fields; reading, at the recipient device, the device identifier; comparing the device identifier to the identity of the recipient device; and responding to the command in the message if the device identifier matches the identity, the transmitted message accessible to the recipient device based on indexing from the device specification, without parsing according to a protocol and variable length payload.