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. OpenCastor is the open-source RCAN runtime that powers robots like Bob.
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
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.
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 →Governance and neutrality
Maintainers: one. The registry and the RCAN specification are currently maintained by one person, Craig Merry. There is no board, no co-founders, no endorsing organizations and no partners yet. Nothing in the registry or the spec has had third-party verification.
Conflict of interest. The maintainer also builds OpenCastor, an open-source runtime that uses RCAN and this registry. His own robots are registered here under the same rules as anyone else's. The specification is licensed CC BY 4.0, so anyone can use or fork it without permission. The registry source is public and anyone can audit it: its code is MIT-licensed and the site content CC BY 4.0.
Independence is a goal, not a fact yet. The intent is to hand governance to a neutral steward. RCAN, with this registry, was proposed to the AAIF (Linux Foundation) as a Sandbox project (aaif/project-proposals#43). On 2 October 2026 the AAIF closed the proposal as declined, labelled “Too Early”. The reasons given were a single maintainer, no independent signal of adoption, no license file in the spec repository (one has since been added) and a draft charter. The maintainer intends to resubmit once those are met. There is no steward today.
Standards. We are seeking review and collaboration from standards bodies and testing labs. The Bounded Embodiment test method was presented remotely in Session 1 (“Core Technologies for Embodied AI”) of the ITU Workshop on “Embodied AI for Multimedia Technologies”, Hangzhou, China, 16 October 2026, held with ITU-T FG-EAI. That was a presentation, not an endorsement. No standards body has endorsed, adopted or approved the method, RCAN or this registry. See Physical assurance and the Bounded Embodiment test method.
Conformance is not certification. Compliance evidence is not regulatory sufficiency.
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
OpenCastor — RCAN Runtime
OpenCastor is the open-source RCAN runtime. It powers registered robots like Bob and Alex, and was the proving ground for the registry and RRN system now governed by this Foundation.
- • Full RCAN protocol conformance (L1–L4) · RRN/RCN/RMN/RHN entity registration
- • Robot Registration Number (RRN) minting and validation
- • Tiered AI brain with provider fallback
- • Fleet management, telemetry, and federated swarms
Current Status
No commitments have been made. This is an invitation to collaborate.