Hi Rich,
Thanks for the post, it looks great :)
Hedayat
Rich
Mattes <richmattes@xxxxxxxxx> wrote on
05/23/2011 11:38:27 PM +0450:
Hi all,
I'm planning on publishing a blog post to fedora planet that goes
into more detail explaining the f15 robotics suite.ï I'm sending
what I have so far, if you have a chance to look it over and
add/clarify anything i missed, I'd appreciate it.ï I'd like to get
it published before release day.
Thanks,
Rich
=====
With Fedora 15's release imminent, I'd like to take the time to
talk
about the Robotics Suite feature.ï As some of you may have
noticed, the
Fedora Robotics Suite is new for Fedora 15, and it is already
showing
up as a bullet point in many reviews of the Fedora 15 alpha and
beta
releases.ï It's clear that very few people actually know what
we're
trying to accomplish with this feature, so I'll do my best to
explain
our motivations.ï The Fedora 15 release notes have this to say:
Fedora
15 now includes the Robotics Suite, a collection of packages
that
provides a usable out-of-the-box robotics development and
simulation
environment. This ever-growing suite features up-to-date
robotics
frameworks, simulation environments, utility libraries, and
device
support, and consolidates them into an easy-to-install package
group.
Visit http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Robotics
for more details.
In
a nutshell, the Fedora Robotics SIG has been working hard over
the past
few releases to create a fast and easy way to dive into robotics
development, for newbies and seasoned developers alike.ï The
first
visibile of this effort is the Fedora Robotics Suite, a package
group
that brings together many different robotics related libraries
to make
it as easy as possible for developers to use Fedora in their
robotics
projects.
ï
Why is the suite needed?
The open-source robotics scene is diverse, consisting of vast
amounts of independent libraries and frameworks that can be used
for
all kinds of robotics tasks.ï Unfortunately, the robotics
develpment
community is small enough that even some of the largest and most
well-known software packages are still "niche" packages in the
scope of
a large linux distribution, often with only a handful of
developers
upstream. These factors add up to several problems that the
Robotics
Suite aims to alleviate:
ï
- Software is difficult to configure and install.ï This
is
mostly a problem for users who aren't familiar with Linux
development
and are diving in headfirst.ï If the configuration and
installation
process for a software component is complex, or the process
isn't well
documented, new users can be put off by the hurdle of getting
their
software environment set up, long before any development can
take
place.ï Our goal is to streamline the process by doing the
hard work
for you.
- Software has too many dependencies.ï Many
robotics-related
programs have criticical dependencies on small or fledgling
libraries
that otherwise have no use to the linux community in general.ï
For
example, the Point Cloud Library (currently under review)
depends on
the cminpack, flann, and eigen3 libraries.ï We want to make
sure all of
these are available with Fedora to spare the users the
time-consuming
process of finding, building, and deploying all of these small
dependencies.
- Software doesn't install properly with Fedora's system
libraries.ï
Fedora leads the way in software versions with the latest and
greatest
packages from upstream.ï Often, developers of these packages
are only
testing their packages against the set of libraries on their
own
machine, and may be oblivious to build errors resulting from
updated
system libraries.ï The Robotics SIG encounters these errors
during
packaging and updates, and works with upstream to correct the
issues.
What's in the Suite?
As noted at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Robotics,
the Robotics Suite currently includes several large-scale
robotics
frameworks and simulators, including Fawkes, Player, Stage, and
the
RoboCup Soccer Simulator.ï The Robotics Suite also consists of
many
specialized libraries like libphidget and libkni thatinteract
with robot sensors and devices, libraries like mrpt and openni
that implement specialized algorithms for things like motion
planning and image processing, and IDEs like Eclipse and Arduino
to make code development easier.
Future Plans
The Robotics
Suite is a big milestone for the Robotics SIG, but we've got
plenty of
grand plans for future Fedora releases.ï We'd like to create an
official Robotics Spin for future releases to make it even easier
to
sample and use the Robotics Suite, in the home or the classroom,
without having to install Fedora outright.ï We are also sponsoring
a
Google Summer of Code student to create educational robotics
software
for new users that takes advantage of the packages available in
the
Robotics Suite.ï
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