I know this project and the people who have been involved in it since its inception. This is one of the best teams that are fully focused on promoting Web 3 ideas in our lives. And I believe that we need to support the ideas and implementations that they offer to our community.

I can see that care and attention have gone into this proposal, and don't dispute that it could have some interest for helping to educate about the use of blockchain for robotics in academic circles.

However we feel that this demonstration does not directly bring value in the short to medium term for KSM holders or wider Kusama ecosystem, and so would be better funded by other sources rather than the Kusama treasury.

Answers for questions from Direction and from polkassembly.

What does it mean to launch a robot on Kusama? How does the robot interact with the network?

The idea is as follows — since there are no parachains in Kusama yet, the operation of the robotic device with the network will be done by transactions in the Robonomics parachain connected to the Rococo test network. If the robot works in this form, then we can say that in a similar way the robot can be launched on the parachain in Kusama. Hence the idea of the proposal — Robots Waiting for Kusama.

Is there going to be a pallet pushed into Kusama natively for this support?

All available pallets can be used for any other robotic and IoT projects in Kusama, even if Robonomics does not become a parachain in Kusama. Pallet will not be used in the Kusama relay chain, but it can be used in any other substrate parachain, not just Robonomics. Pallet examples can be found here: https://github.com/airalab/robonomics/tree/master/robonomics/frame.

Can other Kusama token holders use these robots? Is the process open source and can other users participate?

Robonomics on Substrate has support for the current implementation of the XCMP protocol. Using XCMP in the parachain, it will be possible to launch an IoT device using tokens from other parachains.

What will the repositories include?

If you follow this link (https://index.ros.org/packages/) to the ROS website, you will see packages with modules for various robots. University teams will take such a package for their robot and fork it. Then they will do the main work — see that the package is working, correct it if necessary and link it with Robonomics on Substrate. After that, they will write a README, where they will indicate all the necessary information (what was done, how it works, which version of the package was used for a working experiment, what to do if a more recent version of the package appears on ros.org, etc.). For convenience and consolidation of the result, when they finish, they will send a pull request to the common Robonomics repository specially created for this purpose.

What universities would be involved? If nothing is confirmed, add a list of institutions to reach out to to explain the project and ensure engagement.

The point is that, ideally, we want to work directly with researchers from the circle of our colleagues (for example, among those 120 teams who cite our work). We would not want to involve them in the bureaucracy and turn to the university administration, otherwise it would greatly slow down the project.

We would like to suggest Fabio Bonsignorio, professor from Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna (Italy) as a scientific advisor who could monitor the progress of the project. We have already received his consent to participate.

How will the project interact with Kusama? And how can we explain this project as benefiting Kusama and not solely Robonomics chain? Why is this not projected on Robonomics chain directly instead of Kusama?

Robonomics does not have its own independent chain, and we are trying with all our might to become a parachain. Robonomics has full support for Cumulus, so since Kusama should become the main network for Robonomics, then all the benefits will be for Kusama. In short, the benefit is a complete software chain from the robot module to the implementation of the parachain in Open Source, which can be repeated by any developer on Substrate and ROS.

Outline a budget with expenses at the end to have clarity on where the tokens are spent. Describe your estimated expenses in more detail - organised as a table with bullet points and granular costs.

To better understand how expenses are generated, we need to provide context of academic work. In my experience and the experience of my senior colleagues, the work of a PhD student on a project for a month of work is estimated at about $ 2000, and as a rule, reports must be submitted for six months of work. These are quite comfortable conditions, and we have to compete with them in order to convince our colleagues to participate in this initiative. Therefore, for example, we decided to reduce the amount of bureaucracy in order to increase attractiveness, since this is the most unpleasant part of working in universities.

A link to the table with points is available here.

Perhaps JohnnyB can lower the amount requested for the first milestone and use that to show the council something useful?

In case the current vote does not pass, then I will add a pre-start milestone for 200 KSM and two robotic devices

Polkascan Foundation will support a new treasury proposal of 242.5 KSM. This includes the ‘pre-start milestone’ of 200 KSM plus an additional 42.5 KSM to cover loss of the deposit of the current proposal 53 (motion 240). This course of action was suggested and accepted by the team.

This course of action is in our opinion the easiest way forward to get the team started straight away. Additional funds could be granted after this ‘pre-start milestone’.

FWIW Polkascan Foundation is not unwilling to support the current proposal. However, it unfortunately it did not reach sufficient support during the previous voting round.

Contextual information can be found HERE.