RRF / About

About the Foundation

Who built this and why.

Origin

This started with a robot called OpenCastor Bob — a Raspberry Pi 5 running a navigation stack with a Hailo-8 NPU and an OAK-D camera. When Bob needed to identify itself to other systems and be registered somewhere, it became clear there was nowhere independent to register it.

Building the registration system led to the RCAN protocol specification — a structured way for robots to communicate identity, announce capabilities, and participate in federated swarms. But a protocol without governance is just a spec.

The internet solved this with ICANN. Open source solved it with the Linux Foundation and Apache Software Foundation. DNS, npm, Maven Central, PyPI — every critical piece of shared infrastructure eventually needed a neutral, multi-stakeholder body to govern it. Robotics is approaching that inflection point.

The Robot Registry Foundation is the proposed answer: an independent body to operate the root robot registry with the same structural guarantees that ICANN provides for domain names.

Who's Behind This

C

Craig Merry

(@craigm26)

Software engineer and robotics hobbyist. Built OpenCastor, wrote the RCAN spec, and initiated the Robot Registry Foundation as the governance layer the ecosystem needs.

GitHub → rcan-spec →

The RRF needs co-founders. This is a multi-stakeholder project — it should not be one person's project.

How to become a co-founder →

RRF vs. RCAN Protocol

The RRF and the RCAN protocol are related but independent. The RRF operates the registry. The RCAN protocol defines how robots communicate. You can implement RCAN without registering here. You can register here without implementing RCAN.

Robot Registry Foundation (RRF)

  • → Assigns globally unique RRNs
  • → Operates the root registry
  • → Provides verification services
  • → Governs the robot identity namespace
  • → Federates with other registry nodes

This site: robotregistryfoundation.org

RCAN Protocol

  • → Defines how robots communicate identity
  • → Robot Uniform Resource Identifiers (RURIs)
  • → Swarm coordination protocol
  • → Conformance test suite
  • → SDK and implementation guides

Protocol spec: rcan.dev

Current Status

Identifying co-founders and endorsing organizations
Soliciting feedback on governance model and board composition
Mapping regulatory requirements across jurisdictions (EU, US, Japan, South Korea)
Identifying potential escrow agents and successor organizations
Exploring incorporation options (US 501(c)(6), Swiss foundation, EU association)

No commitments have been made. This is an invitation to collaborate.