Open source robot controllers

Hi, 

I have read the description of the OROCOS project and it seems very
interesting. I work in an AI lab (called LABORIUS) in Sherbrooke
University in the dept. of electrical & computer engineering. We are
actually working on a free, GPL / LGPL, robot controller based on the
Overflow project. here is the link :

http://freespeech.sourceforge.net/FreeSpeech/html/Overflow/

Overflow is a free (GPL/LGPL) "data flow oriented" development
environment. It can be use to build complex applications by combining
small, reusable building blocks. In some way, it has similarities with
Simulink and LabView, although it is not designed (and far) to be a
"clone" of any of them.

Overflow features a GUI that allows rapid application development and
features a visual debugger. Although Overflow can be used as a rapid
prototyping tool, it can still be used for building real-time
applications, such as audio effects processing, robot controllers, etc.
Since Overflow is not really an "interpreted language", it can be quite
fast. Network descrition(s) are saved to XML documents and are easy to
maintain. Networks created with the graphical environment can also be
processed in "console mode", so it requires less ressources for the
system to run.

It is written in C++ and features a plugin mechanism that allows
plugins/toolboxes to be easiliy added. Overflow currently includes the
following toolboxes:

    * Signal processing
    * Speech processing (part of the Open Mind Speech project)
    * Vector quantization
    * Neural network
    * Fuzzy logic
    * Real-time audio effect processing (early stage)
    * Linear algebra using LAPACK (early stage)
    * Image processing (early stage)

Future enhancements could provide toolkits for the following
applications :

    * Artificial Intelligence
    * Audio Synthesis
    * Robotics


The Overflow project was first used to create real-time audio processing
blocks. But we quickly found that it could be used to build robust robot
controllers. In a near future, we plan (LABORIUS team at
http://www.gel.usherb.ca/laborius) to release a project that will be
called RobotFlow that will include robotic libraries containing blocks
to build robot controllers from low level actuators / sensors control to
high level AI controllers (TCA, Subsumption, etc.) Our goal, in fact is
to provide a nice mecanism / interface so that people can write their
own toolboxes (public and private) and participate to improve the core
elements of Overflow (network communication, object sharing, data-flow,
etc.)


I hope this information can be of any help. If you have any questions or
comments, don't hesitate to contact me.

Best Regards,

Dominic Létourneau


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Dominic Létourneau
Université de Sherbrooke
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
LABORIUS (http://www.gel.usherb.ca/laborius)