player/stage demo program

[John McLean]

Hello all,

I recently returned from my trip, and I'm going to start writing up a demo 
program for player and stage in the next few days. I'll probably write it 
in C, since the C library for player is the most documented (I would write it
in python --much simpler-- except there is nearly no documentation
for the playerc module).  What are we looking for in a demo program in 
terms of functionality?  Does it need to be interactive? What interfaces 
should I include (ie. position, laser, ptz, etc.)?  I'm looking for a 
general idea of what I should start with.

--John

[Tim Niemueller]

John McLean schrieb:
>  
>  Hello all, 
Hi John.

>  I recently returned from my trip, and I'm going to start writing
> up a
>  demo program for player and stage in the next few days. I'll probably
>  write it in C, since the C library for player is the most documented (I
>  would write it 
Oh cool. I'm also back and have now some time to work on the Fedora
robotics stuff, I will send an email about this tomorrow.

>  in python --much simpler-- except there is nearly no documentation
>  for the playerc module).  What are we looking for in a demo program in
>  terms of functionality?  Does it need to be interactive? What interfaces
>  should I include (ie. position, laser, ptz, etc.)?  I'm looking for a
>  general idea of what I should start with. 
I think this pretty much depends on what you can do. You cannot do any
sensor data extraction in a few days if you are not experienced in
robotics, but in the simulated environment you have already some data
like position etc. that you can work with.

The first thing is probably just interfacing with Player/Gazebo, output
some data, make the robot do anything, so that you get to know how it
works in general. There maybe something viable in the Player source as
example, maybe?

A thing that should be pretty easy to do is have a small application
(console or GUI, wherever you can excel) that allows for a simple
movement of the robot. When you are able to drive around in the
simulator remote-controlled that's already something! I don't know what
you had in mind, to me a Pioneer model/world looks like a good start.
It's pretty well-known and many will recognize it and comes with Gazebo.
For the LiveCD we need something fancy with a nice GUI, of course. But
this can also come at a later point.

Does that help as input for a start?

	Tim

-- 
    Tim Niemueller <tim(a)niemueller.de&gt;      www.niemueller.de
=================================================================
 Imagination is more important than knowledge. (Albert Einstein)

[John McLean]

On Fri, 1 Aug 2008, Tim Niemueller wrote:

>  John McLean schrieb:
> >
> > Hello all,
>
>  Hi John.
>
> > I recently returned from my trip, and I'm going to start writing up a
> > demo program for player and stage in the next few days. I'll probably
> > write it in C, since the C library for player is the most documented (I
> > would write it
>
>  Oh cool. I'm also back and have now some time to work on the Fedora
>  robotics stuff, I will send an email about this tomorrow.
>
> > in python --much simpler-- except there is nearly no documentation
> > for the playerc module).  What are we looking for in a demo program in
> > terms of functionality?  Does it need to be interactive? What interfaces
> > should I include (ie. position, laser, ptz, etc.)?  I'm looking for a
> > general idea of what I should start with.
>
>  I think this pretty much depends on what you can do. You cannot do any
>  sensor data extraction in a few days if you are not experienced in
>  robotics, but in the simulated environment you have already some data
>  like position etc. that you can work with.
>
>  The first thing is probably just interfacing with Player/Gazebo, output
>  some data, make the robot do anything, so that you get to know how it
>  works in general. There maybe something viable in the Player source as
>  example, maybe?
>  
I've been using player/stage, because I can't get Gazebo installed yet. 
The build process is outputting errors I don't understand enough to fix. 
If someone's got an rpm/srpm I'll install that.

There are several examples in the player source which I've been looking at 
that are helpful.

>  A thing that should be pretty easy to do is have a small application
>  (console or GUI, wherever you can excel) that allows for a simple
>  movement of the robot. When you are able to drive around in the
>  simulator remote-controlled that's already something! I don't know what
>  you had in mind, to me a Pioneer model/world looks like a good start.
>  It's pretty well-known and many will recognize it and comes with Gazebo.
>  For the LiveCD we need something fancy with a nice GUI, of course. But
>  this can also come at a later point.
>  
If all we need is a small gui to control various parts of the robot (ie. 
motors, gripper) and receive data from sensors (ie. laser, sonar) , then 
playerv will do that job just fine as far as I can see.

>  Does that help as input for a start?
>  
And yes, this does help :)

>  	Tim
>
>