What is the Aikernel?

Last update: 2003-Sep-4

In its current generation, the Aikernel is a product full of possibilities. As such, it can be a little bit difficult to define. We're assuming you are a fairly technical reader and we'll approach the answer from two perspectives: what it is architecturally and what it might mean to you as a software engineer.

First, what does it mean to you?

At its most basic, the purpose of the Aikernel is to provide the framework for building applications that are connected to your users in more natural ways than has been done before. Sounds like a marketing brochure, but I really mean it. Consider that today's applications are based mostly on operating systems that depend on an event model that consists mostly of point and click events that you need to react to. This is true whether you are writing code for the web or what they now call a "fat client" on KDE or Windows.

But computing is becoming more ubiquitous. If you divide the entire computing contiuum of users into two camps, there are the people that are basically just coming online and the point and click, web based world works great for them, they are probably light computing users who are content to surf the web and to use word processing. Then there are the power users who have surrounded themselves with technology: PDA's, cellular phones, Wi Fi, MP3 players, and a lot more.

In becoming more ubiquitous, the traditional point and click becomes less and less useful. In the new world of computing we need systems that can react to life's events. That is where the Aikernel comes in. Its job is to plug into the your user's world and listen for events, including but not limited to:

1. natural language, such as "do I have any e-mail from Kelly?"
2. incoming e-mail the car's fuel guage
3. my flight has been delayed
4. new articles on news.google.com
5. the sensor detects that the robot forward sensor is 0.50 meters from the wall and the motors are turning at 0.25 m/s.

This is probably pretty apparent to you by now, but what can you do as a developer? The Aikernel is designed to become the platform that can uniformly wire your application (called a cell) into your user's world and to react to its stimulus.

Secondly, so what is it?

In a nutshell, the Aikernel is a Java based application that can run in a variety of modes. It includes both the framework for snapping together all the pieces and parts of an intelligent server and a basic implementation to get you started. It provides the event collection and activation as well as a cell runtime environment that you can build application on top of. It is an open source project hosted on Sourceforge.net and licensed under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

It was originally developed by me, Michael Rice as a product of Natural Machine Corporation. We now work on Aikernel as an open source community and build our products on top of it. We open sourced the product for the first time late 2001 and have been committed to it ever since. It has been my dream since I was a child to build this product, and now I hope it can become our dream as a community of worldwide software creators!

Michael Rice, CEO
Natural Machine Corporation
Phoenix, Arizona