Even Rocket Science isn't rocket science...

This page was last updated in 2002, but some of the links are still of interest. We are planning to implement a better resource in the future -- TJH (2006-5/10)

These are projects I have found on robotics that may be related to the Crew Spider project. Most of these are from Source Forge. I am continuing to look for other robotics resources that are related. See also the links and portal pages linked at the bottom:

Open Automaton Project

"The purpose of this project is to engineer modular software and electronic components, from which it is possible to assemble an intelligent PC-based mobile robot for the home or office." Interested in open, modular robotic design. No extant examples, though. Last modified 2001-2. Home page is not too bad, but very early development. Most sub-pages are incomplete. There is a decent Links page. Contact: Dafydd Walters or SF Mailing List.

Robotic Software

"This project aims at developing a robust yet practical multiprocess robotic "nervous system" that will allow a four-legged robot to control itself autonomously in nine degrees of freedom." Nicely specific goal. This is a student project from "Ecole Polytechnique Montreal". There are some 10 developers. Nice Home page, and they do have hardware. Contact: SAE Robot.

Sam's Embedded Linux Contest

No home page, looks lame or dead.

EGg0: Robotic Programming with Python

"Educational programming language tools written in Python for use with PC/104 computer based robotics teaching at the middle/high school level." Home page is good. Looks active. Contact: Project or Mailing List

AKO Robot Development Kit

"AKO provides hardware and software for rapid prototyping and development of robotic projects. It utilizes a distributed microcontroller network with a centralized controller." Based on a UT Arlington student project. Home page is good. Contact: Chris McFarlen or Geoffrey Wossum.

The Voyager

"The Voyager project is to develop modular, reusable hardware and software for an autonomous, underwater, robotic explorer." Automated submarine vehicle. Not much information available, and seems pretty specialized to task. Home page is just a placeholder. Contact: Mailing List.

Intelligent Virtual Robots

Ghost project, no homepage, no description, no mailing lists, one developer. Contact: R Martin.

AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language

"AIML is an XML-based language for creating chat robots like ALICE."

The Robotics Simulation Project

"The Robotics Simulation Project is a high-level, distributed robot simulator that lets students (or anyone) write controllers and learn about AI subjects such as rule-based systems, neural networks, and genetic algorithms." Student project. Very simplistic simulation, like "robots" game. Currently inactive due to end of student project. Home page

Robotics using Linux and HC11/12 uC

"Tools, documentation, and references for programming the Motorola HC12 and HC11 microcontrollers under Linux, with a focus on using these microcontrollers in amateur robotics." Home page is a placeholder. No info beyond description. Contact: Daniel Myall.

Open Robotics Project

No homepage, no description, two developers. Contact: Mailing List.

The Rossum Project

"The Rossum Project is an attempt to collect and distribute robotics software. We are seeking help with our first project, a mobile-robot simulator featuring a 2-D virtual world, and new work including artificial intelligence and robot-control logic." Fairly well-developed home page, software releases, etc. Also intends to act as a forum for general software sharing on robotics. Seems to focus on mouse robots. Contact: G.W. Lucas.

OROCOS: Open Robotic Control Software

A framework and development project for important components of robotic software. This appears to be a "toolbox" approach in which useful components are developed and collected for the use of developers on specific projects. Appears to be fairly immature (only started in 2001), but is progressingly fairly quickly and has university and government backing (in the EU). Interesting keywords: XML, Python, GPL/LGPL, DocBook. The Home page is an excellent resource already. Contacts: Mailing List, Peter Soetens. Also has a nice Links Page.

From the site:

``Orocos focuses on three complementary issues:

• Basic libraries:

  1. real-time motion control for mobile robots, manipulator arms, haptic devices, walking robots, etc.
  2. kinematics and dynamics of these devices.
  3. device drivers for robotic hardware:
  4. processing of sensor data
  5. low-level task specification and task sequencing
  6. communication between loosely coupled components

  The design and implementation of the higher control levels (3D simulation, task planning, etc.) are not part of the Orocos project. But, of course, Orocos will want to exchange ideas with open source projects that work on those higher levels, and be compatible with them.

• Design of active components: Which ``agents'' are needed to build robotic systems? What are the most appropriate interfaces and clusters? Etc.

• Long-term scope: Orocos should define the robot software of the future, and not just be a re-implementation of existing industrial controllers. The scope of Orocos is indeed much wider than that of industrial robot manufacturers. One important distinction, for example, is the requirement for interoperability: Orocos should work on different hardware and robot platforms, and not be restricted to the robots of one single manufacturer.

Other projects will have to complement Orocos, to fill in the higher levels of robot control. ''

Modular Controller Architecture

"A modular, network transparent and realtime capable C/C++ framework for controlling robots and other kind of hardware. The main plattform is Linux/RTLinux, support for Win32 and Solaris also exists." Software release exists. Impressive 3D robotic simulation framework provided. Might be a good basis for CS². Worthy of study. Appears to be a collaboration between multiple university-level projects in German. Home page provides an API documentation browser. Contact:Kay-Ulrich Scholl or Mailing List. Screen shot:

See also Projects Using MCA2:

LAURON 3

AirBug

BISAM

KAIRO

ARMAR

Affiliated with:
Interactive Diagnosis and Service Systems (IDS): "The scope of functions of the group IDS covers the following fields:

• Development of mobile service robots and
• Diagnosis and inspection of installations and technical systems"

A European industry group with very similar mission concepts to Crew Spider.

gupeto

"Development of firmware and hardware for a small mobile robot based on the Motorola 68332 CPU and the real-time operating system RTEMS." Seems to be a mouse robot type. Home page is fairly simple, and in German. Contact: Peter Mueller.

Enhanced Machine Controller

"EMC is software that implements real-time control of equipment such as machine tools, robots, and coordinate measuring machines. It runs in real-time under Linux with the NMT rtlinux patch, and in nonrealtime under Solaris, and WindowsNT." Beta release available. Home Page is fairly well-developed, and refers to CNC machine tools. Contact: emc@nist.gov or Mailing List.

Robotic Control

No description, no mailing list, no homepage. Contact: John Cole.

Unix Robotics Project

"A gathering place to develop ideas on robotics." Broken Home Page, is supposed to have forums, links, and FAQ. No mailing list or SF forum. Contact: Matt Poepping.

LinAXE

"Welcome to the linAXE Project...linAXE is an Open Source project to further develop tiny or embedded versions of Linux and Real Time Linux Operating Systems for use in Robots and Autonomous Machinery". Objective seems to be mostly software, they are interested in "BattleBots" but want to target a wide range of robotics applications. Nice Home Page. Contact: K. Davis or B. Gutman. Nice Links Page too.

GL Articulated Structure System

"A library in the tradition of openGL and glut that makes it easy to use 3D skeleton objects (like robots, ships, people etc) in openGL programs. Currently the objects are best created with glote (glote.sourceforge.net)". Possible CS² material? Beta release available. Very active CVS. No mailing list. Decent Home Page with sample programs using glass. Contact: Robert Cleaver Ancell. Also, note the editor project, GLOTE with its Home Page.

Project: HAL

"Project HAL is inspired from the movie Odysse 2001, of cause this project is not ment to develop such a higly interactable AI. It is a modular approach to build a AI capeable of controlling a robot body." (sic). No home page. Contact: Martin Hansen

Reconfigurable Intelligent Modular Robots

"The aim is to provide an object oriented implementation of modular robots. The software will generate a 3D simulation of its operation. At later stage intelligence and reconfigurability will also be implemented." Active CVS. "On Hold" since 2001-4. No Home Page. Contact: Peter P.V. Soetens, Dieter D'haeyere, or Mailing List.

jabot

"Event-driven controller for small remote robots. this approach is using an MIDI-style object mechanism for controlling over the internet. JINI and Java based and is going to work on small devices like the Palm." Files released. No Home Page.Contact: Sebastian Wiswedel.

RFC Bajen

"Development of Sensorfusion algorithms and Artifical intelligence for autonomous robots." No Home Page. Windows platform. Contact: Johan Hedlund, Mikael Ericsson, or Carl-Magnus Moon.

Heterogeneous Autonomous Mobile Robotics

"HAMRe - Heterogeneous Autonomous Mobile Robotics Emulation. This project is to develop a framework in which a master-slave(s) robot configuration can be given tasks to a master slave in which it will in turn divide up among the slaves." No Home page, no mailing list, no releases. Contacts: Ryan Corder, Robert Kiilsgaard, Brent Worley, Brandon Willis, or Casey Milford.

Linux Multiple-Axis Control Project

"Multiple Axis device control (CNC, Robotics, etc)". Fairly new (est. 2001-5). No home page. No mailing lists. Contact: Edison Gieswein.

Stereo Vision

"Given a video feed consisting of a pair of stereo images to determine wat are the various objects in the scence and how far they are from the camera. This would ultimately be a visual navigation tool for robots." No category, no home page, no mailing list, no releases. Sujit Kuthirummal.

OpenSim

"OpenSim - Open Simulator. Primarily a 3D simulator for multiple indoor and outdoor mobile robots. Includes a scene-graph API and a physics engine. Think Doom3, physics, shaddows, outdoor terrain and vegetation!" New (2001-6), not much developed, no mailing list, Very basic Home Page, Contact: David Jung.

virgola

"The virgola project aims to create a new system to drive a robot, based on a three layers structure with intercommunication channels, based on the concept of the duties abstraction repartition." New (2001-6), No home page, no mailing list, no releases. Contact: Stefano Falconetti.

Soccer Bots

Robotic soccer client

No desc. Contact.

RoboCup Video Server

"The goal of this project is the implementation of a robust, flexible video server for RoboCup (An international research initiative aimed at building teams of robots that can play soccer)." Release, Contact: jbaltes, bennv.

Lego and other commercial robot software projects

TinyVM

"A really low footprint (< 10 Kb) Java VM and replacement firmware for the Lego Mindstorms RCX microcontroller, which is part of Lego's Robotics Invention System. TinyVM is the progenitor of leJOS." Production, v0.2.6, Home Page, jhsolorz, Developer Mailing List, User Mailing List.

legOS Alternative Lego OS

"legOS is an alternative software environment for the Lego Mindstorms Robotic Invention System. The intent is to allow developers to write C code for the RIS platform." Production, v0.2.4, Home Page, Contact: luge, paolom, or News portal.

LEGO::Cybermaster

"A Perl module to communicate with a Lego Cybermaster radio controlled robot." No home page, beta release, no mailing list. tomdm.

leJOS

"A Java based replacement firmware (OS) for the Lego Mindstorms RCX brick that comes with Lego's Robotics Invention System. leJOS is meant to be a more complete (although less compact) alternative to TinyVM." Releases, active CVS, Up to date Home Page, Contact: jhsolorz, bbagnall, mpandrews, starblue.

Map-N-Zap

"This is Map-N-Zap, the control program for Probotic's Cye Robot. This includes all of the PC-side control software, including the path planner, user interface, and iconic programming language. It is only known to compile under MSVC++." Release 2.1, No home page, but hosted on Cye Robot Home Page, Contact: Parag Batavia.

DRobot

"This project aims to provide support (source code, hardware modifications, etc) for Nomadics robots. If you don't have one, go elsewhere" Release 1.0, Contact: davidaustin.

Nomadic Robot Software

"Application software, libraries, drivers, and hardware API documentation for Nomad series robots." Home Page: In November of 2000, Nomadic Technologies, Inc. was bought by 3com, Inc. Recently, 3com agreed to release source code to all drivers, libraries, and applications which run on the Nomad series of robots Scout, Scout II, Nomad 150, Nomad 200, and XR4000). As soon as these files can be re-released under the GPL, they will be posted here." bananajr.

RHex Robot Control Software Libraries

"RHexLib is the control software library for the RHex robot [...]. It features an efficient real-time static scheduler, low level motion control tools, state machine based controller designs and various..." RHex robot Home Page: "The RHex project aims to develop a six legged robot, capable of achieving a wide variety of dynamically dextrous tasks, such as walking, running, leaping over obstacles, climbing stairs, with a single autonomous platform. Our emphasis is on mechanical simplicity and the exploration of control strategies designed to work with the natural dynamics of the robot."

Home Page, Contact: ulucs@users.sourceforge.net.

Contractors & Commercial

Yobotics!

"At Yobotics we create legs, whether they be artificial legs to help disabled people walk, or part of legged robots. We're currently putting most of our "leg-work" into the RoboWalker, a powered orthotic brace which will augment or replace muscular functions of the lower extremities." Outgrowth of MIT "series-elastic actuator" research I studied before. Alternative actuator design?

Contact:
webmaster
sales

Links to Robotics Resources (Links Lists)

• The Robot Cafe -- Nice portal site, search engine, categories etc. No "piezo" though.
• Robotics Websites -- Categorized links list (no reviews or search).
• The Dallas Personal Robotics Group -- Parent site of the above.
• Seattle Robotics Society's Encoder -- Newsletter. Takes contributions.
• More Robotics Links on AnansiSpaceworks.com (unreviewed).