Re: Using orocos for a team of mobile robots

Hi,

>> *Other Frameworks*
>> Can Orocos easily be combined with another framework like Marie or MIRO?
> Yes, because both frameworks do (mostly) other things. Marie is, roughly
> said, good at "visual programming" with components, and Miro is an
> intercomponent communication framework.

I would like to give some precisions regarding MARIE. Herman is right about 
MARIE being able to support visual programming but I would like to clarify 
that it's not MARIE's main objective. Visual programming is achieve through 
the support of another software called FlowDesigner (and RobotFlow which is 
a robotics toolkits for FlowDesigner) and we're using those tools to create 
robotic systems. MARIE's main objective is to develop component-based 
frameworks and tools that allows integration of external tools, such as 
FlowDesigner and Orocos for example, and make them work together.

>> Has somebody experience with one of these frameworks?
> I don't know of anybody who has already made the "glue" between these
> frameworks...

Supporting Orocos is on our todo list from a long time ago, but never 
materialized so far. I would be glad to collaborate and support anybody 
wanting to start this initiative. Feel free to contact me to get more info.

BTW, we'll be releasing a new version of MARIE by the end of this month 
(MARIE 0.5), which includes many great enhancements (mostly on usability and 
extensibility) and more documentation on how to exploit MARIE architecture 
to build robotics systems. Our webiste will also be updated as it begins to 
be really oudated.

Carle
-- 
Carle Cote (http://www-edu.gel.usherbrooke.ca/cotc2204/)

Laborius - Université de Sherbrooke (http://www.gel.usherb.ca/laborius/)
MARIE's project homepage (http://marie.sf.net)