[notes about] What's going on... ?

Hi there,

Unlike you would expect from the list trafic, a lot is still going on on the 
Orocos front. The KTH contribution has produced a lot of well documented code 
but no discussion about it has happend on the list yet. 

[ For people having no idea :

Orocos is supposed to find solutions for robotics software on 3 fronts (in no 
order): 

1* Defining a common communication framework between components. The layer was 
proposed by Christian Schlegel (and many times discussed on this list) and 
implemented  by himself and at the KTH. It is a quite high abstraction layer 
and does not (yet?) cope with realtime issues.

I refer to the  FAW website  http://www1.faw.uni-ulm.de/orocos/ and to the KTH 
website http://cogvis.nada.kth.se/orocos/ . 

2* Providing a realtime control framework using realtime operating systems. 
This is done at the KUL. All code is aimed at functioning in realtime. 
Previously this meant 'kernel modules', nowadays, with the LXRT integration, 
you can also run your realtime application in user space (more about this in 
another mail).

Latest development efforts can be seen here : 
http://www.orocos.org/cvs_status.html

3* Defining an event based, realtime capable and programmable 'Execution 
Engine' for handling component control flow. This is partial overlap with 
some patterns in the communication part since they also use events. This work 
is supposed to emerge from LAAS. However, needing this urgently at KUL might 
lead to a proposal from this corner.

Website LAAS : http://www.laas.fr/~mallet/orocos/  ]


Due to the three different problems, different solutions are emerging, and we 
_know_ this is not a good thing. I remember that the following points were on 
the agenda :

1. Set up a global repository of idl interfaces
2. Use common libraries
3. have meetings.

All three have not been done lately. At the end of the project, KUL and KTH 
will be able to show something, but wouldn't it be nicer if we could show 
something together (I'm talking integration here.) Ok, this is the main point 
I actually wanted to discuss. 
--> KTH is using log4cpp, XMLwrap, ACE ( are you happy with this ? ) and TAO, 
a self made build system, some idl specs and an in house made pattern 
implementation. In addition, they deliver the software to build some servers 
to control a robot.
--> KUL is using automake, has a c++ interface layer, realtime os abstraction, 
a realtime device abstraction layer (comedi, canbus, ...),  an in house 
property and reporting system (opposed to XMLwrap and log4cpp), a kinematics 
library (with 3D trajectory generators), and a lot of different classes to 
glue it all together (<-- we know this is bad).
--> LAAS ???

I'd like to make from these three arrows one arrow with no contradictions 
listed within. New evolutions at the KUL front (the other mail) will soon 
make this possible. I am wondering how the other partners are feeling what 
should be done to come closer together.

Peter


-- 
Peter Soetens
The Orocos Project  : http://www.orocos.org
KU Leuven - Belgium
--