Re: Graphical programming support

On Sat, 9 Dec 2006, [email protected] wrote:

[...]
> There are  users that don't have a deep knowledge of C++ and
> don't need to develop
> new components, often they only need to
> concentrate on assembling  control blocks already available.

Indeed!

> Our
> group is thinking about a  friendly user interface, which should allow
> this category of users to
> build control systems from available blocks:
> controller, sensors,  kinematics chain and so on.

Absolutely true. This has been in our (very) long term roadmap since day
one of the project :-)

> This user interface in our idea should expose component as graphical
> blocks that can be dragged on canvas and connected each other in a
> graphical way. Users should only specify relevant parameter for each
> block. The interface should generate the correct C++ code based on OROCOS
> framework from the raphical model. The goal of this interface is to avoid
> the effort of writing C++ code to user focused on control.
> Our goal is to build a tool that allows faster and easier development of
> control system and to assemble a library of components.

The Marie project 
<http://marie.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page>
is an effort in this direction (independent of Orocos, but most probably it
is possible to make both projects compatible with minimal effort.)

> Another field of interest is
> the definition of robotic systems, like kinematical chain, using a 3D
> cad like Blender.
I have a master student working on Blender at this moment, with this
precise goal. But the effort is _huge_ and we would be very happy to share
that effort!

[...]
> This information is really succinct but I hope can give an idea of our
> goals and we are very interested in your opinion about these activities.

These ideas sound like music to my ears :-) Let's use the orocos-dev
mailinglist to start brainstorming about these things in more detail, and
come to some sort of rough sketch about what could be done in the short
term.

Herman

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