Latest entries for tag 'announcement'
ROS Integration for Fawkes
Fawkes and ROS are robot software frameworks, each with unique features. Recently, we have added plugins to Fawkes to participate in the ROS ecosystem as a ROS node. Furthermore we have created rosfawkes. It encapsulates Fawkes in a ROS package for straight-forward inclusion.
The Fawkes ros plugin allows users of Fawkes to benefit from the wealth of code that is being written for ROS nowadays. Other components can access ROS and communicate with other nodes via topics or provide or invoke services. Fawkes plugins can be written that benefit from the focus and infrastructure on these closely implemented components, much like nodelets on steroids.
The rosfawkes package embeds Fawkes into ROS and provides a specialized main application embeds Fawkes in a ROS node. The package makes it possible to use all of Fawkes' libraries and tools in ROS nodes. For example, the ros-webview integration plugin allows ROS nodes to extend the Fawkes webview web interface.
With this code we have only made the first step, but an important one. We strive for an even closer integration in the future.
The basic installation instructions for the two ways of integration are described in the (preliminary) rosfawkes documentation.
Posted by Tim Niemueller on May 26, 2011 00:03
Google Summer of Code 2011
The Fedora Robotics SIG has completed the Fedora Robotics Suite, a set of robotics related software packages that are readily available in Fedora Linux. Fawkes is one prominent member of this package set. The original idea also envisioned creating an educational application, where a user would learn step by step to control a robot, then instruct, and finally program it. The project could not be completed due to a developer shortage.
The project has now been proposed as one possible candidate for the Google Summer of Code 2011 with the Fedora Project as mentoring organization. If you are a student with a background in robotics and experience in C++ software development please consider applying for this project. The Fedora Robotics SIG comprises many developers of upstream software projects providing a good way to get in touch with those projects. It will also be a very visible feature of the Fedora Robotics effort providing a good show case for later applications.
To apply please read information on the Fedora GSoC 2011 page and contact Tim Niemueller of the Fedora Robotics SIG.
Posted by Tim Niemueller on March 23, 2011 12:20
Fawkes 0.4.2 released
The new GCC version 4.6.0 uncovers more issues than previous GCC releases. With this release, these have been fixed. These bugs did not manifest in typical operation. Additionally, Linux 2.6.38 drops support for Video4Linux version 1, and thus its (non-)existence must be detected. On newer kernels, only the Video4Linux version 2 interface is built now. The issues had been fixed in the master branch a while ago.
These fixes have now been backported to the 0.4 branch, in particular for the upcoming Fedora 15 release. It was detected by our continuous integration build hosts.
Posted by Tim Niemueller on February 22, 2011 12:05
Fawkes 0.4.1 released
In the last few months some minor improvements have been made that we want to share with this release. In particular packaging Fawkes for Fedora shed light on some shortcomings.- Manual pages
- All console and GUI tools now come with manual pages. They describe the available options more in-depth than the already existent usage instructions that you get when calling a tool with the "-h" parameter.
- Configuration files in user home directories
- Until now Fawkes expected a central configuration directory writable by everybody running Fawkes on the system. This is typical on real robots, but this can pose problems on multi-user systems, e.g. during development or using simulation environments. Now, the configuration can still be read from this directory, but information is stored in a .fawkes directory in the user's home directory.
- Enforcing undefined symbols
- On shared libraries and plugins undefined symbols were not enforced. This is the default behavior of the GNU linker. This can lead to plugins which cannot be loaded later. To uncover this kind of error earlier we now enforce all symbols.
- Fixes
- This release contains some minor bug fixes and adjustements for the latest version of libmicrohttpd.
Posted by Tim Niemueller on January 9, 2011 19:55
Fedora now includes Fawkes
Recently we proposed Fawkes for inclusion into Fedora. The review has completed and the package has been accepted! Fawkes and its development environment can now be installed out of the box, see the download page for instructions.
On a related note Fawkes has been chosen by the Fedora Robotics SIG to play a major role in the Fedora Robotics Spin along with Player and Stage. The main idea of this spin is to have software on a LiveDVD providing a ready-to-use robotic simulation environment, with a demo application to introduce users step by step to the available software. Additionally as much robotics related software as possible, ranging from packages for hardware access (laser scanners, robotic arms) and robotic middleware frameworks, to full-blown simulation environments and libraries relevant for robotic applications like vision processing or task control will be added. The Robotics Spin has been proposed as a Fedora 15 Feature.
For this LiveDVD Fawkes will be used in combination with Player and Stage to provide the environment for the demonstration application. In particular, the behavior engine based on Lua will be the tools used to guide the user to complete tasks of increasing complexity within the Stage simulation environment. Among others like Player/Stage and the RoboCup 3D Soccer Server Fawkes will be one of the highlighted robot software packages.
Posted by Tim Niemueller on November 16, 2010 18:09
Final review of upcoming release 0.4
About half a year ago we made the initial Fawkes 0.3 release. Now we are close to releasing the next version 0.4, which contains several improvements and new functionality. For a developer's summary please have a look at the mailing list post. The code is currently under final review in the current-pre-0.4 branch, where all relevant feature branches have been merged and final fixes and cleanups have been applied. Everybody is invited to have a look at the code and give review suggestions before the release in about a week. Initial packages for Fedora have been built and with the release we will likely present binary packages for easy installation for the first time.Posted by Tim Niemueller on February 4, 2010 16:08
