Normally many different programs, programming languages and tools are necessary to produce the program code for the robot. Additionally the source code must be compiled for different platforms, both for the robot, and for the simulator running under Windows XP.
To simplify this endless development process, we want to use the .NET - Framework in the future. .NET offers an ideal platform, in order to network embedded systems among each other and to develop software solutions for distributed algorithms and data structures. 
We want to achieve this goal by replacing the existing Aperios operating system of the Sony-Aibo by a Microsoft WindowsCE Kernel. This has to be adapted to the specific robot hardware and the MIPS R4000 processor.
In the first step of the project we examined and analyzed the integrated hardware of the robot, designed an appropriate bootloader and provided a kernel. The CE system is booted over an Aperios software on the AIBO into the main memory. The processor is switched afterwards into the kernel mode, the bootloader is started and the CE kernel takes over control. As shown in the following short  movie (8.5 M), the suggested approach works and the robot core boots WindowsCE.
The next steps are now to port the developed robotic control software RobotControl to .NET. Finally drivers for the CE Kernel have to be developed. However, to accomplish this task direct support of the manufacturer Sony is necessary, since for a set of hardware components no documentation is available.
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