Inq: Open Linux controller interest?

Dear colleagues,

following a suggestion by Herman Bruyninckx I would like to inquire
whether there is an interest among EURON members in jointly developing
an open source robot controller system based on the Linux OS (or
other free UNIXes) with the primary aim to integrate complex sensor
systems; preferrably within Herman's OROCOS initiative.

Background: After recognising that there are no really free and
documented open controllers available (although there have been some
attemps to design them), we made a virtue out of necessity and started
to develop an implementation of our own a couple of years ago. We drew
on our experience with John Lloyd's RCCL system, which we ported to
Solaris and to PC-Linux (took us quite some time...).  We have also
developed PCI-bus hardware for directly interfacing standard position
encoders and the necessary joint controllers, all running under
Linux's real-time extension. Currently, we can interface the Stäubli
RX series and, with the RCCL port, the Mitsubishi PA-10. It should be
no problem, however, to interface similar types of robots.
We are now working on a specification for a higher-level C++ control
library,
which is highly object-oriented, which incorporates John Lloyd's
ideas (and, indirectly, some of Herman's) for next-generation
controllers as well as our own experience in adaptive control.
This spec might be a good starting point for defining a basis for a
common open source effort.

Anyway, we have come to realise that the work involved in designing
such a complete system is too complex to be shouldered by just one
working group, in particular if funding is hard to get. Hence our
interest in sharing our result with interested partners, and possibly,
approach the EU in the very near future to get funding. If you are
interested, then I would be very happy if you could send me an e-mail
indicating the nature of your interest before the EURON meeting, and
we could exchange our ideas there.

Even though we believe that this groundwork is essential, the main
focus of our research is on high-level sensing, particularly in the
area of distributed multi-sensor systems with adaptive reconfiguration.
Here, we would also have large software packages for
rapidly designing and running such systems that we would like to share
with others, i.e. make them openly available. Please contact me also if
your interest is in this area (this topic, it seems to me, does not
(yet)
really fit into one of the interest groups...)

Sorry for sending this mail to the general list, but I feel that the
subject  is not
in the center of one single session of the meeting. It is rather across
current
interest groups and hence, maybe, of general interest...

With best wishes,
Alois Knoll.

** Attend the 2nd IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots
** Humanoids2001 at Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, Nov. 22-24, 2001
** http://www.humanoid.rise.waseda.ac.jp
______________________________________________________
Prof. Dr. Alois Knoll
AG Technische Informatik
Technische Fakultät
Universität Bielefeld
Postfach 10 0131
D-33501 Bielefeld
Germany
Tel.: ++49 521 106 2952
Fax: ++49 521 106 6440
http://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/~knoll/
______________________________________________________

begin:vcard 
n:Knoll;Alois
tel;fax:+49 521 106 6440
tel;work:+49 521 106 2952
x-mozilla-html:FALSE
org:Universität Bielefeld;Technische Informatik
adr:;;;;;;
version:2.1
email;internet:[email protected]
title:Professor
fn:Alois Knoll
end:vcard