Company News

 

9 JUN 00	Notification of Patent Award USPTO sends notification that the patent for Direct Device Interfaces to the video graphics adaptor and timer chip will be announced on 20 JUN 00.  The patent number is 6,078,747.
5 JUN 00	Web Pages Submitted to Search Engines and Web Rings Web page development complete for all but links to download DDIs and corresponding documentation.  Enabling of these links is pending based on feedback from legal counsel.
MAY 00	Notification of Trademark Protection The USPTO issues a Certificate of Trademark Registration for "Direct Device Interface". The registration number is 2,349,155
MAR 00	Business Plan Review To obtain feedback from the investment community, the business plan is presented to attendees of an international investment forum, venture capitalists, and an economics professor.
JAN 00	Business Plan Kickoff Kickoff meeting held to begin development of a business plan and product roadmap based on our core technology.  Salient features of the business plan are as follows: Our bottom line is simple but potent - Win16S/32S is a user-extendible, non-proprietary, commodity operating system which scales using  DDIs  in order to satisfy a broad spectrum of requirements.  The impact on markets and corresponding benefits to the consumer will be similar to when non-proprietary hardware (the IBM PC) banished proprietary systems (Amega, Commodore, DEC) from the marketplace. Windows and Linux include features that way overshoots the needs of most of the market for client-side applications.  Proliferation of the internet, on the other hand, is relentlessly breaking down the delivery of code into components which are downloaded on an as-need basis.  As the industry moves away from shrink-wrapped, client-side applications software and corresponding operating systems, consumer demand for a web browser running on low-cost hardware (<$250), i.e., independently of Windows, will increase dramatically.  Markets will be created by providing low-cost systems - 2.6 people of access to computers, the world population in 5.6 billion. The long-term plan is to develop web browsing capability running on credit-card and biscuit PCs, with product shipping in 6-12 months.  The short-term plan is to develop web-appliances which work in conjunction with server-side applications in order to provide Real-Time and Embedded (RT&E) capability.  Products for launch markets will be available in 6-9 months. The strategic goal is to automate expensive processes using the internet to form unique relationships with developers and customers who make and use applications programs, respectively.  Sales, order processing, and distribution of consumables will be outsourced to the customer, thereby eliminating the need for any physical marketplace.  The web page will engage a world-wide network of programmers focused on product development and motivated by  generous profit sharing opportunities.  Interstate Robotics will give away proprietary tools and software components that programmers may use to evolve away from the software industry in its current form.  At the same time, our competitors value chain for creating and distributing shrink-wrapped software will become a value-warping liability. Our main competitive advantage is the scalable approach of our technology and the ability to exploit the full flexibility of a programming language without the restrictions, complexity, and overhead of  Windows  and  C/C++.  Our time-to-market is short, mainly because it is easier to utilize a highly scalable solution from scratch than to use an inappropriate existing infrastructure of programming languages and operating systems.
NOV 99	Continuation-In-Part Application A continuation-in-part application entitled "Application Program Interface To Physical Devices" (Serial Number 09/002.818) is filed to remove several technical flaws that could be used to attack the original patent.  The new patent application keeps the filing date of the original application.
MAR 99	Ben Franklin Technology Center Interstate Robotics' core technology is presented to the Ben Franklin Technology Center sponsored by the State of Pennsylvania.  We are basically told that software solutions which lack synergy with Sun Microsystem or Microsoft current product lines have no value in the market place.
FEB 99	Dem/Val Program Successful completion of a program to develop the DDIs needed to provide an interface to the PXC200 Color Image Acquisition Board manufactured by Imagenation .  In addition to board in order to demonstrate and validate that: Develop an image acquisition component for the visual programming tool DDIs are capable of providing an interface to PCI devices with DMA bus mastering capability Multiple DDIs are interoperable and may be used to extend Win16S/32S operating system services
SEP 98	Visual Program Tool Visual programming tool development is complete after integration with a Graphics Device Interface (GDI) and Timing Device Interface (TDI), implemented as DDIs to the video graphics adapter and 8253/8254 timer chips, respectively.
APR 97	Incorporation The principals form Interstate Robotics, a type S corporation in the State of Delaware.
FEB 97	Preliminary Patent Application Preliminary patent application entitled “System and Method For Providing A Device Interface” (Serial Number 60/038.887) is filed with the USPTO.
MAR 96	Change of Plan Recognizing that DDIs . . . provide significant technical, cost, and performance advantages for RT&E systems were needed to complete development of the visual programming tool a decision is made to focus our efforts on developing, testing, and obtaining patent/trademark protection for such interfaces to the video graphics adapter and 8253/8254 timer chip.
JAN 96	Sentry Robot Development Kickoff Working in a small room in the basement next to the water meter, the principals begin developing algorithms, software components, and a visual programming tool for a mobile sentry robot.  By introducing design requirements on the speed, response time, resource utilization, design tolerances, and other characteristics of software providing the application layer (application programs, applets, and threads) with an interface to physical devices and using simple results from queuing theory, it was discovered that significant technical improvements are possible relative to the prior art.  Specifically, it is possible to simultaneously reduce code size, achieve determinism, minimize computer resource utilization, and maximize speed by combining the device driver and corresponding API into a single dynamically linked component called a Direct Device Interface (DDI).  Functional requirements indicated that DDIs were needed to develop data acquisition and display components for the visual programming tool.