STEAM is an open source (MIT) project addressed to design and develop architectures, protocols, software and hardware for automating (control and monitor) scale model systems, as diy robots or scale-model trains can be, but not limited to them.
In terms of digital scale-model train automation, systems as DCC (based on power line communication) were fantastic ten years ago. Since then different radio communication technologies have been developed while hardware decreased its size and price, allowing scale model digital automation going one step ahead. Though some emerging solutions have arised in the last times (as Roco-Fleischmann z21), most are brand property, ie not open, therefore evolving against the usual current of going "open" that you can find in hardware and software. That is the reason why STEAM makes sense.
About diy robotics, another area of application of STEAM project, great improvements in hardware and software consolidation has been done in the last years, arising hardware platforms as Arduino and its related Arduino IDE with great acceptance. However few efforts has been doone in upper layers in order to unify the interface between end end user and the robot, that is supposed to run full anonimously and just getting settings changes when the robot is offline. In this area, a protocol addressed to interact with robots seems to be necessary.
There are two main information sources: One is the GitHub repository wiki and the other is the project's blog . The wiki contains the official documentation whereas the blog contains (big surprise) the project bitacore.
If you are good in hardware electronics or firmware/software develpment and have free time for participating on this project, contact the project administrator to become project contributor. Welcome!!!