Path: rwsys!kf5iw!wb9rxw!texsun!cronkite.Central.Sun.COM!news2me.ebay.sun.com!sun-barr!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!psinntp!gdstech!wlim From: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com (Willie Lim) Newsgroups: comp.robotics Subject: Update to mobots survey Message-ID: <1992Jul17.204254.14564@gdstech.grumman.com> Date: 17 Jul 92 20:42:54 GMT Organization: Grumman Corporation, Bethpage, New York, USA. Lines: 1174 ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;; ;;; ;;; ;;; ;;; RESPONSES TO INFORMAL SURVEY ON DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTS ;;; ;;; FOR MOBILE ROBOTS ;;; ;;; ;;; ;;; ;;; ;;; ;;; ;;; Updated: Fri Jul 17 16:17:22 1992 ;;; ;;; Created: Sat May 23 09:37:24 1992 ;;; ;;; ;;; ;;; Maintained by: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com (for now) ;;; ;;; ;;; ;;; Please send updates, additions, corrections, etc. to: ;;; ;;; wlim@gdstech.grumman.com ;;; ;;; ;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; Organization Project Robot Development Languages & Type HW Environment SW Enviroment ============= ============= ==== ============== ============= Alcatel Alsthom Indoor robot Own design SPARC II, VME proc VxWorks, MOTIF Recherche (AAR) Outdoor robot Own design Brown U. Mobile robots Own design SPARC I & II, OS/9, GNU Emacs, Xlib, (RWI base) VME 68030 MOTIF, Forth, C, C++ CMU a) SM^2(walker) Own design VME 68020 & 68030, Chimera II RTOS, C, Sun Sun tools b) AMBLER (6 Own design VME 68020 & 68030, MOTIF, VxWorks, leged walker) SPARC II, Iris X windows, C c) Mobile Mani- HERO 2000 Z8088s, Sun IPC & ELC, X Window, Lisp, C, Hero pulator NeXT Basic d) Mobile robot Own design SPARC, Iris, Mac, X windows, Openwindows, VME, Maspar, Titan VxWorks, Chimera RTOS, TCA, GIL, LISP e) Navlab Own design Sun-4 X windows, C Colorado St. 6-legged robot Own design 68HC11EVM, AT C Cornell U. 2 mobile robots Own design Gespak 68000, Intel Scheme, Lucid Lisp (robot with (RWI base) 80c196, Sun(?) tank-tread base coming) Cray Research(?)Mobile robot Own design MC68HC16EBV, 386 Assembler Georgia Tech Mobile robots Denning DRV-1 SUN IPC, Decstation, X windows, C, & MRV-II Microvax II Lisp Grumman CRC SmartyCat Cybermotion Mac II's/IIci's, C, CLOS, LISP, SAL K2A uExplorer, SGI(soon) VxWorks(soon) 68030 VME board(soon) IBM TJ Watson Own design Symbolics, RS/6000, LISP, CLOS, CLIM, (RWI bases) 286, 386, Suns C, X-windows, MOTIF, GNU Emacs ISX Corp Subsumption Own design Mac II cx's/ci's C(?) JPL 7 robots Own design Suns to 6811 RCCL, ALFA MIT 20 robots Own design Mac II & IIsi, HC6811 Behavior Language Polly Own Design VME, 6811, Mac Senselisp(Scheme) (RWI base) MITRE Mobile robot Denning MRV-1 MacQuadra, uExplorer Lisp, REX/GAPPS, C, C++ NRC of Canada EAVE Customized Mac II's, 68020's C, HARMONY OS, MacAPP Cybermotion NC State Mobile robot? Own design VME 68020 & 68040, OS/9, P/NET Mac Purdue U. PETER Cybermotion Sun4, 68030 C, VxWorks Stanford Landmark based Nomadic Mac IIci C, LISP Navigation Swiss FIT Mobile robot Own design Mac MacMETH, Modula-2 U of Central a) 6-leg walker Own design Commodore 64 SuperC, C b) 6-leg walker Own design Amiga 500 C U Wash. Mobile robots Denning HP 9000 series 300's, Gensym G2, OS/9 68000 LLAMA (Forth), Lisp, C VTT (Technical Akseli Own design HP-1100, 386 MS-DOS, LynxOS (soon) Research Center base with C of Finland) "turtle" config Organization Submitted by ============= =========== Alcatel Alsthom Recherche (AAR) noreils@aar.alcatel-alsthom.fr Brown University kjb@cs.brown.edu CMU a) dstewart@IUS4.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU b) Reid_Simmons@FREESIA.LEARNING.CS.CMU.EDU c) Reid_Simmons@FREESIA.LEARNING.CS.CMU.EDU d) nivek@frc2.frc.ri.cmu.edu e) Chuck_Thorpe@IUS4.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU Colorado State University jn163051@longs.lance.colostate.edu Cornell University jar@cs.cornell.edu Cray Research kilian@palm.cray.com Georgia Tech arkin@cc.gatech.edu Grumman CRC wlim@gdstech.grumman.com IBM TJ Watson nhaas@watson.ibm.com ISX Corp cfriedla@isx.com JPL gat@robotics.Jpl.Nasa.Gov MIT maja@ai.mit.edu ian@ai.mit.edu MITRE slack@starbase.MITRE.ORG NRC of Canada Liscano@IIT.NRC.CA North Colorado State University aras@eceris.ece.ncsu.edu Purdue University kak@ecn.purdue.edu Stanford eno@leland.stanford.edu Swiss Federal Institute of Technology vestli@ifr.ethz.ch University of Central Florida rbc@engr.ucf.edu University of Washington bob@robocop.ee.washington.edu VTT (Machine Automation Lab., vjs@kau.vtt.fi Tech. Res. Ctr. of Findland) ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ;;; ;;; ;;; ;;; ;;; Edited (minor) messages (detailed responses) ;;; ;;; ;;; ;;; ;;; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; From cfriedla@isx.com Thu May 21 11:53:14 1992 Date: Thu, 23 Apr 92 11:41:43 PDT To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com (Willie Lim) From: cfriedla@isx.com Subject: Re: An Informal Survey of Robot Development Environment (an RFI) Our group works with and builds Brooks Subsumption Robots So we all use Mac II CX or CI . *********************************************************** * * * Carl Friedlander Ph.D. (818)706-2020 * * ISX Corporation FAX (818)706-2056 * * 4353 Park Terrace Drive Page (818)592-5410 * * Westlake Village, CA 91361 * * * *********************************************************** From eno@leland.stanford.edu Thu May 21 11:53:32 1992 Date: Thu, 23 Apr 92 12:07:31 PDT From: eno@leland.stanford.edu To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com Subject: Re: An Informal Survey of Robot Development Environment (an RFI) I'm working on a project on landmark based navigation, we use: 0) A robot from Nomadic Tech. (based here in Palo Alto) which has three rings of sensors i) 16 sonars ii) 16 infrared sensors iii) 16 fairly useless bumpers.. the only processing done on board is control of motors and sense cycles and communication via the radio-modem 1) I'm using a mac IIci because basically that's what was available and I think until recently, that was the only platform for which they'd written an interface for. Until now, processing power hasn't really been an issue. 2) The interface and simulator are both written to run in Allegro Common Lisp, which is nice. The on board stuff for the robot is, as far as I know (pardon my ignorance, but I haven't had to mess with it yet), C for the 6811s which written, compiled, and downloaded from any old PC with the proper connections. hope this helps, If you want, I can get more technical specs concerning on board processing, sonar and IR, etc.... Ben From noreils@aar.alcatel-alsthom.fr Thu May 21 11:53:44 1992 Date: Fri, 24 Apr 92 10:58:33 +0200 From: noreils@aar.alcatel-alsthom.fr ( Fabrice Noreils ) To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com Subject: robotics Dear Willie: We have two robots at Alcatel Alsthom Recherche (AAR): The first one is a robot for indoor environment and has two motorized wheels and is equipped with a ring of 16 ultrasonic sensors and laser stripe range finder. This work focusses on world modeling (using sonars), navigation (obstacle avoidance and path planning), and mission planning. The second one is a robot for outdoor environment and has four tiltable tracks robot equipped with force sensors, an inertial reference system, and a laser-stripe range finder. This robot is either teleoperated or autonomous and thus it is able to model the terrain (with the laser-stripe) and plan a trajectory (by modifying the orientation of the tracks). Both Robots software run on a VME multi-processor hardware (up to 10 boards) supporting a real-time operating system (VxWorks). Softwares are first developed on SPARC II workstations connected to Ethernet ( workstations run X windows and MOTIF) and are then downloaded into robots. If you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact me Cheers - fabrice ------------------------------------------------ Fabrice R. Noreils Research Scientist Alcatel Alsthom Recherche Route de Nozay 91460 Marcoussis - France email: noreils@aar.alcatel-alsthom.fr phone: 19 - 33 - 1 64 49 17 73 FAX : 19 - 33 - 1 64 49 06 95 ------------------------------------------------ From jn163051@longs.lance.colostate.edu Thu May 21 11:53:47 1992 Date: Fri, 24 Apr 92 19:20:39 MDT From: jn163051@longs.lance.colostate.edu To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com Subject: Re: Development Environments for Mobile Robots Newsgroups: comp.robotics In-Reply-To: Organization: Colorado State U. Engineering College Cc: Six legged walking robot, legs in stretched hexagon, each leg has three DOF, legs activated by pneumatic cylinders, no intermediate positions extend/retract only, eight walking directions, spin CW/CCW, limping mode involves walking on five legs only, speed 0.4 m/s, IR sensor detects range and direction to reflector obstacle. Controlled by on board motorola 68HC11EVM, code generated in C on an AT. Regards -Joel From kilian@palm.cray.com Thu May 21 11:53:49 1992 Date: Sat, 25 Apr 92 11:47:40 CDT From: kilian@palm.cray.com (Alan Kilian) To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com Subject: Re: Development Environments for Mobile Robots Newsgroups: comp.robotics In-Reply-To: Organization: Cray Research, Inc. Cc: kilian@timbuk.cray.com I have a mobile robot with a rotating ultrasonic sensor. It has a Motorola MC68HC16EBV Evaluation board mounted on it. I use the Motorola Assembler and evb16 debugger on a Zeos Notebook 386 PC to develop the software. -Alan Kilian kilian@cray.com 612.683.5499 (Work) 612.729.1652 (Home) Cray Research, Inc. 655 F Lone Oak Drive, Eagan MN, 55121 From vestli@ifr.ethz.ch Thu May 21 11:53:55 1992 Date: Sun, 26 Apr 92 12:49:00 +0200 From: Sjur Jonas Vestli To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com (Willie Lim) Subject: Re: Development Environments for Mobile Robots [stuff deleted --- wlim] Own design, documentation available on request. [stuff deleted --- wlim] Macintosh, connected to robot via serial link (wireless lan in the future when frequencies are released here), connected to setral facilities via Appletalk. [stuff deleted --- wlim] Own development (on both Mac and Robot). Both based on MacMETH (Mac Modula-2 ETH). Own real time kernel for the robot. [stuff deleted --- wlim] Modula-2 Sjur J. Vestli Institut fuer Robotik Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. From kjb@cs.brown.edu Thu May 21 11:53:59 1992 Date: Sun, 26 Apr 92 12:43:29 -0400 From: kjb@cs.brown.edu (Ken Basye) To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com Subject: Dev. Env. for Mobile Robots Reply-To: kjb@cs.brown.edu 0) We have a couple of robots built on RWI bases with Denning sonar modules; the on-board computation is done on New Micros Inc. 68HC11-based single-board computers, which have a FORTH kernal in ROM. 1) We use SUN sparc 1's and 2's networked with ethernet (TCP/IP) 2) We edit with GNU emacs, write graphical stuff with Xlib and Motif. 3) We use FORTH on the robot, and C++ on the workstations. ----------- We have another robot under development - here's my best guesses about that: 0) The robot is based on a much larger RWI base (about 26 in. diameter, 1200 W/hrs of battery power). The on-board computer will be a Moto. 147 - a 68030-based VME board with lots of interface, including ethernet. This will be running OS-9 with realtime extensions. 1) same workstations 2) Same environment on workstations, OS-9 environment on robot 3) We'll use C or C++ on the robot instead of FORTH From arkin@cc.gatech.edu Thu May 21 11:54:02 1992 Date: Mon, 27 Apr 92 07:32:25 -0400 From: arkin@cc.gatech.edu (Ronald Arkin) To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com Subject: Re: An Informal Survey of Robot Development Environment (an RFI) All I have time for: 1) Denning mobile vehicles - DRV-1, MRV-II. 2) Sparcstation IPC, Decstation 5000/120, Microvax II, ethernet links 3) Standard unix environments and tools (X windows) 4) 90% C, 10%lisp. From dstewart@IUS4.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU Thu May 21 11:54:06 1992 To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com Subject: Re: Development Environments for Mobile Robots Newsgroups: comp.robotics In-Reply-To: Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon Cc: Date: Mon, 27 Apr 92 8:41:18 EDT From: dstewart@IUS4.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU Sender: dstewart@IUS4.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU [stuff deleted --- wlim] Self-Mobile Space Manipulator (SM^2). (Principle Investigators: Ben Brown (hbb@ri.cmu.edu) and Takeo Kanade (tk@ri.cmu.edu)) This walking robot has been designed for space station trusses, to both travel on it, and manipulate objects (e.g. other parts of the truss structure, satellites, or tools required by astronauts.) [stuff deleted --- wlim] VMEbus-based system, with several Ironics MC68020 and MC68030 single board computers (SBC). Each SBC is running the Chimera II Real-Time Operating System (finger 'chimera@cmu.edu' for more info on it). The system also contains ADCs, DACs, and PIOs for I/O. The VME system is hosted by a Sun workstation, on which development is performed, using standard Sun tools (e.g. cc, dbx, X or Sunview, etc.) and the Chimera II support tools. Communication between the Sun and VME system is through BIT3 VME-to-VME adaptor. The robot is tethered, hence does not carry the computer on board. Multiple CPUs are used to get additional performance. All interprocessor communication is over the VME backplane and processor transparent, and the capabilities are provided by Chimera II. [stuff deleted --- wlim] C for everything. We also use "reconfigurable systems software" methodology for developing modular and reusable code (finger 'chimera@cmu.edu' for references). Dave Stewart From aras@eceris.ece.ncsu.edu Thu May 21 11:54:10 1992 Date: Mon, 27 Apr 92 16:12:33 -0400 From: aras@eceris.ece.ncsu.edu (Caglan M. Aras) To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com Subject: Re: Development Environments for Mobile Robots Newsgroups: comp.robotics In-Reply-To: Organization: North Carolina State University Cc: [stuff deleted --- wlim] We are using a 6 processor VME system (4- 68040, 2-68020) with OS/9 and P/NET, a distributed pipe manager for multiprocessing. We also have a datacube frame grabber and framestore. We use the VME both for development and for the actual control. In addition we have used the Image program on the macintosh to process some of the images before writing specific programs on the VME system. -- Caglan M. Aras | Robotics and Intel. Systems Lab. RISL- Box 7911 | aras@eceris.ece.ncsu.edu North Carolina State University | ph: 919-515-5405 Raleigh, NC 27695 | From nhaas@watson.ibm.com Thu May 21 11:54:16 1992 Date: Tue, 28 Apr 92 20:33:24 EDT From: nhaas@watson.ibm.com To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com Subject: Re: comp.robotics query [stuff deleted --- wlim] The short answer is that we use about 70% Symbolics, 15% RS/6000; 5% DOS machines of various flavors, and 10% Suns. Over time, the RS6000s will increase. We have (as you know) 4 RWI 12" bases, and the Esched Scorbot III arm. We have since acquired a Zebra Zero Gravity arm, specially lengthened to our specifications. We use Lisp, except for Alberto, and the vision people, who use C. Jon has lately been trying to use Microsoft Small C on one of the DOS machines. He doesn't like its lack of debugger, or lack of decent debugger. On the RS6000, we use Lucid lisp, with CLOS and CLIM. It works OK for me, but Jon does a lot of array-consing, and the garbage collector seems to have a bug where it runs out of space eventually. (I don't see this in my work, though.) We are still running the beta-test version they sent us last summer; they say there'll be a new, real production version of Lucid coming in a few weeks. The debugger for this Lisp is OK but not great by any means. There is one guy around here who has Allegro; he says the debugger is really nice, but still only about 75% of what Genera provides. CLOS seems to have no problems of any kind. I like CLIM a lot, especially the colors (!) and 8-bit gray scale (Symbolics' displays have to dither to show gray), but we still have version 1.0, which I think has some flaky (repeatable, but stupid) behavior which I expect will be ironed out in the next release of CLIM (1.1? 2.0?). We of course use X-windows for everything on the AIX or UNIX machines. Mostly use Motif (mwm); Alberto uses twm, if I remember correctly. The DOS machines mostly do NOT run windows, but there are 2 here that do. (We have 286 and 386 processors; no 486's so far. All stationary. On board the robots, only Jon's 68HC11 network, coupled by radio (ARLAN is the manu- facturer) modems to the Symbolicses. Networking: Symbolics' Chaosnet, Ethernet, and PC token-ring LAN. TCP/IP, NFS-mounting between all machines except PCs. We do not have VxWorks, OS-9, CONDOR, or anything like that. The C people on the RS6000 use something called SabreC, which they claim is great in all respects. Alberto uses Khoros for image-munging, and another tool with a name like XRS. He likes them. For figure document preparation, there's I-DRAW, which might be available on both UNIX and AIX, which creates just wonderful color foils, and I gather it's not hard to run. Hope this will do. Feel free to ask questions on anything I've forgotten to address. -Norm From rbc@engr.ucf.edu Thu May 21 11:54:23 1992 Date: Wed, 29 Apr 92 11:38:10 EDT From: rbc@engr.ucf.edu (Robotics Club) To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com Subject: Re: Development Environments for Mobile Robots Newsgroups: comp.robotics In-Reply-To: Organization: engineering, University of Central Florida, Orlando Cc: [stuff deleted --- wlim] 6 legged walking machine, designed for the SAE Walking Machine Decathlon. Each joint powered by a DC Brush motor, with feedback being given by potentiometer. Digital sensors include foot on ground, obtacle in leg path, and platform level. [stuff deleted --- wlim] uh, a commodore 64. They are cheap, and we have had experience with them. We use a custom made memory map controller using four 6522 Versatile Interface Adapter chips, and one ADC8017 16 channel, 8 bit A/D. [stuff deleted --- wlim] ... We use SuperC, a C language compiler for the C64. [stuff deleted --- wlim] C Note. We are moving to another robot, same configuration, we will use a 68000 based Amiga 500, another custom controller card with four 6522's and 2 ADC8017's, development environment is DICE, Dillon's Integrated C Compiler, a Freeware C compiler. We use amiga's and CBM equipment due the the fact that interfacing to the 68000 is very simple, and we use them as our own computers. The Amiga has a very nice near-real time multitasking operating system, which will run in 512K. WITH your code. From nhaas@watson.ibm.com Thu May 21 11:54:27 1992 Date: Wed, 29 Apr 92 12:27:49 EDT From: nhaas@watson.ibm.com To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com Subject: More I meant to mention in my previous note that the typical way to run Lisp under AIX is to run it in a GnuEmacs buffer. With Lucid, there is no partic- ular synergy; with Allegro, there is the ILISP package (which I think was written at CMU), which is a suite of GnuEmacs-lisp routines that tightly couple the editor to the lisp, so that you can do "meta-point", for instance, and many more good things. I implemented a couple of these sorts of things myself to work with Lucid, but didn't achieve the same level of performance, because I was just passing text strings to *standard-input*, and Lisp read them whenever it felt like it. The ILISP system uses a TCPIP "socket", and starts a Lisp process which is dedicated to reading it; this process is asynchronous with the main lisp process or processes. From Reid_Simmons@FREESIA.LEARNING.CS.CMU.EDU Thu May 21 11:54:30 1992 To: Willie Lim Subject: Re: [wlim: An Informal Survey of Robot Development Environment (an RFI)] In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 05 May 92 06:10:45 EDT." <9205051010.AA01323@gdstech.grumman.com> Date: Tue, 05 May 92 11:11:12 -0400 From: Reid Simmons Willie, Sorry for the delay in responding. I'll answer regarding my two robot projects: the Ambler Planetary Rover and the Mobile Manipulator. If you'd like, I could forward this on to other projects at CMU (NavLab, HMMWV, Tessalator). Reid I. AMBLER: 0) A brief description of your robot configuration. Ambler is a six-legged robot designed for autonomously walking across rugged terrain, such as that found on Mars. The Ambler features orthogonal legs (RPP mechanisms) that decouple horizontal and vertical motions. It has a novel *circulating gait*, in which trailing legs recover through a central body, past the other legs, to become the new leading leg. The Ambler uses a scanning laser rangefinder to provide 3D terrain maps, and six-axis force sensors in each foot to indicate terrain contact. The Ambler also has incremental and absolute encoders on each joint, and two inclinometers to indicate tilt and roll of the machine. 1) Type of workstations (e.g. SUN, Silicon Graphics, IBM RS6000, HP, IBM PC/XT/AT/286/386/486, Macintosh, ...) used and why. If you more than one workstation, please say how they are networked (e.g. ethernet with TCP/IP, Appletalk,...) The Ambler uses 9 Creonics motion control boards for low-level servo control. The real-time controller is implemented using two Motorola CPU boards that communicate via a VME backplane. Perception and planning software run on two on-board Sun SPARC II workstations, which communicate with each other and the controller via thin-wire Ethernet and TCP/IP. The perception software communicates with the laser scanner via an S-bus to VME-bus converter. The various hardware choices were made mainly for reasons of availability and compatibility with our existing development environment. We also make use of two simulators -- a 2D X-based simulator, that runs on Sun workstations, and a 3D simulator running on a Silicon Graphics IRIS workstation. 2) The development environment used for both the workstation and the on-board robot e.g. GNU software, MPW (for the Mac), X windows, MOTIF, VxWorks, CLIM, ... Operating system is standard Sun Unix for the perception and planning software, VxWorks for the real-time controller. User interface is done with a combination of X and Motif. Systems integration uses the home-grown Task Control Architecture (TCA), a message-based system for passing data and control information between distributed processes. Communication through TCA is via TCP/IP, and the architecture runs on Sun, NeXT, and RT machines. 3) Languages used: C, LISP, Prolog, CLOS, ... Development uses C exclusively. II. Mobile Manipulator 0) A brief description of your robot configuration. The Mobile Manipulator project is based on a HERO 2000, which is a 2-wheeled robot with manipulator arm and gripper. The sensors include scanning sonar, fixed base-mounted sonar, and a pointable wrist-mounted sonar. There is a BW camera mounted on the robot plus a ceiling-mounted camera for use within the laboratory. The tasks of the Mobile Manipulator include collecting cups from the lab floor, retrieving and delivering printer output, recharging itself when necessary, and exploring its surroundings. 1) Type of workstations (e.g. SUN, Silicon Graphics, IBM RS6000, HP, IBM PC/XT/AT/286/386/486, Macintosh, ...) used and why. If you more than one workstation, please say how they are networked (e.g. ethernet with TCP/IP, Appletalk,...) The on-board processors of the HERO are Z8088s (I think). These are programmed to execute guarded move commands and to provide a higher-level interface to the off-board system. The off-board system uses standard Sun workstations, mostly IPCs and ELCs. We also have a speech interface to the robot operating on a NeXT workstation. Communications to/from the robot is via a 9600 baud radio link. Camera images from the robot are transmitted via a standard Rabbit video transmitter, and digitized on a Matrox board. 2) The development environment used for both the workstation and the on-board robot e.g. GNU software, MPW (for the Mac), X windows, MOTIF, VxWorks, CLIM, ... Development is using standard Sun Unix. User interface is via X windows and text-based entry. Allegro CommonLisp is used for the LISP-based processes; the CC compiler for C-Based processes. Systems integration of the distributed processes is via the Task Control Architecture, which is used to connect both the LISP and C processes. 3) Languages used: C, LISP, Prolog, CLOS, ... On-board software development is in HERO-Basic (sigh). Off-board development is in C (for the controller and perception software) and LISP (for the planning and user-interface software). From slack@starbase.MITRE.ORG Thu May 21 11:54:33 1992 Return-Path: Date: Tue, 5 May 92 11:59:51 EDT From: slack@starbase.MITRE.ORG (M. G. Slack) To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com Cc: bonasso@starbase.mitre.org, slack@starbase.mitre.org In-Reply-To: R. Peter Bonasso's message of Fri, 1 May 92 09:08:57 EDT <9205011308.AA22969@starbase.mitre.org> Subject: [wlim@gdstech.grumman.com: An Informal Survey of Robot Development Environment (an RFI)] Willie, I would like to do an informal survey of the development enviroments being used out there. The things that I would be interested in are: 0) A brief description of your robot configuration. A Denning MRV-1 mobile robot platform, -The base is synchro drive -An optional head platform is installed with an independent turn axis -upper ring of 24 sonars at 15degree separation about 2.5 feet off the floor -Lower ring of 6 sonars ~eq spaced with baffels about 5 inches off the floor -Pitch and roll clinometers -IR Beacon reading system -Laser target reading system -Base processor is 68000 which communicates to the robot's subsystems -Additional 100 Amp Hr 24 volt power and necessary Dc-DC converters to supply power to an on-board MacQuadra - We also have a PRISM real time sterio vision system which can be mounted on the robot and controlled to provide additional sensory information. 1) Type of workstations (e.g. SUN, Silicon Graphics, IBM RS6000, HP, IBM PC/XT/AT/286/386/486, Macintosh, ...) used and why. If you more than one workstation, please say how they are networked (e.g. ethernet with TCP/IP, Appletalk,...) The MacQuadra which is on-board uses RS232 ports to command and read the sensors and actuators leaving the lowlevel control to the periphial computers. Ethernet is used to down-load programs to the quadra which compiles them into a runtime module. There is also an RF modem which is used to send telemetry to another macintosh which is located remotely and allows a user to observe internal inforamtion of the robot as well as provides a mechanism for traded control. 2) The development environment used for both the workstation and the on-board robot e.g. GNU software, MPW (for the Mac), X windows, MOTIF, VxWorks, CLIM, ... Code is developed in a lisp environment (Mac Lisp or on a uExplorer) using the REX/GAPPS languages which reside inside of lisp. The result is a circuit definition which implements the developed algorithm. The circuit is then sent to a backend which generates a simulation of the circuit in C, Lisp, ... We use the C backend. The C code is then sent to the robot where it is compiled and run. 3) Languages used: C, LISP, Prolog, CLOS, ... C, C++, Lisp Please send your responses (keep them short, please) to me (wlim@gdstech.grumman.com). When I get enough responses I'll post a summary to comp.robotics. Thanks in advance. Willie From gat@robotics.Jpl.Nasa.Gov Thu May 21 11:54:36 1992 Date: Tue, 5 May 92 10:01:43 PDT From: gat@robotics.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Erann Gat) To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com Subject: Re: An Informal Survey of Robot Development Environment (an RFI) Unfortunately, these are not short answers in our case. We have at least seven mobile robot systems and four manipulators and every one has a different setup - everything from Suns running RCCL to 6811's running ALFA. Perhaps if you told me why you need to know I could focus the answer appropriately. E. From Reid_Simmons@FREESIA.LEARNING.CS.CMU.EDU Thu May 21 11:54:48 1992 To: Willie Lim Subject: Re: [wlim: An Informal Survey of Robot Development Environment (an RFI)] In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 06 May 92 06:13:46 EDT." <9205061013.AA12062@gdstech.grumman.com> Date: Wed, 06 May 92 08:12:27 -0400 From: Reid Simmons [stuff deleted --- wlim] Reid PS In my description of the Ambler's controller, the two Motorola CPU chips are one 68030 and one 68020. From nivek@frc2.frc.ri.cmu.edu Thu May 21 11:54:53 1992 Date: Wed, 6 May 92 10:22:17 EDT From: Kevin Dowling To: cet@cs.cmu.edu, benny@frc2.frc.ri.cmu.edu, nivek@frc2.frc.ri.cmu.edu, wlim@gdstech.grumman.com Subject: Re: [wlim: An Informal Survey of Robot Development Environment (an RFI)] Willie, cc: benny, cet Most robot configurations here in Field Robotics and Vision and Autonomous Systems are mobile systems with some advanced manipulation work going on as well (Khosla et al). Nearly all workstations here are Sun SPARC's with a smattering of IRIS' for simulation and graphics although the Sun's running XGL are pretty fast. There are a couple of Macs too but are used only for some Mac applications and not for robot control etc. We do have special purpose hardware as well with a number of VME based systems, Maspar parallel processor, Titan graphics machine etc. Development evironments are UNIX usually running X11R5 and/or Openwindows environments. VXWorks is used for real-time development on most systems and CHIMERA (home brew RTOS) is used also for some manipulator control. There are extensively development systems for task control and communications such as the Task Control Architecture (TCA) and large libraries of imaging software (GIL) Language most used is C, not for any particular religious reasons but it is most convienent and offers HLL power and LLL flexibility. LISP is also used to a smaller extent. Hope this helps. nivek From Chuck_Thorpe@IUS4.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU Thu May 21 11:54:55 1992 To: Willie Lim Cc: nivek@IUS4.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU, benny@IUS4.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU Subject: Re: [wlim: An Informal Survey of Robot Development Environment (an RFI)] In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 06 May 92 09:39:33 EDT." <9205061339.AA13567@gdstech.grumman.com> Date: Wed, 06 May 92 17:32:57 -0400 From: Chuck_Thorpe@IUS4.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU 0) Navlab and Navlab II mobile robots 1) Sun-4's, for historical reasons 2) X windows, sometimes Athena widget set 3) C ... but all the above may change in the near future, as we look for faster machines, look at C++, InterViews, etc. -- Chuck From bob@robocop.ee.washington.edu Thu May 21 11:55:08 1992 From: Robert W. Albrecht eeb537 5-1600 Subject: robot development environment To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com Date: Wed, 13 May 92 9:26:37 PDT Mailer: Elm [revision: 64.9] Per your request, here is a summary of robot development environment. 0) ROBOTS: 2 Denning mobile robots with ultrasonics, laser reflectometer, video, tactile bumpers, infra-red beacon detection, wheel encoders, speech synthesis, etc. 1) WORKSTATIONS: 7 HP 9000 series 300 workstations - ethernet TCP/IP 2) WORKSTATION DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT: Gensym - G2 real-time expert system in off-board workstations. radio link and/or wire line to robots. Locally developed multitasking operating system named LLAMA on board the robots running on MC 68000 in a basic OS-9 operating system. 3) LANGUAGES: Gensym - G2 off board with foreign functions in C. G2 is basically written in LISP. LLAMA on-board which is FORTH-like but written in C. -- Bob Albrecht From maja@ai.mit.edu Thu May 21 11:55:11 1992 From: maja@ai.mit.edu (Maja J. Mataric) Date: Thu, 21 May 92 10:48:11 EDT To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com In-Reply-To: Willie Lim's message of Thu, 21 May 92 09:34:46 EDT <9205211334.AA01513@gdstech.grumman.com> Subject: [wlim: Survey] Robot configuration: We are working with 20 small mobile robots. The robots are rectangular foot-long wheeled bases equipped with piezo-electric bump sensors around the body, and a forklift for finding, carrying, and stacking pucks. The forklift has a suite of 6 infra-red sensors, two for obstacle avoiding, four in the jaw for puck positioning, and two for alignment and puck stacking. The system also includes two radio stations which allow the robots to triangulate their position, and transmit and receive 8-bit messages at 1Hz. This system allows us to test a variety of collective and cooperative behaviors. Workstations: Macintosh IIsi, Macintosh II. Development Environment: Macitosh Allegro Common Lisp. Languages: The robots are programmed in the Behavior Language, a high-level parallel robot programming language. The Behavior Language compiles into the Subsumption Architecture, which further compiles into a variety of target assemblers including HC6811 microprocessor assembler which is what our robots use. From ian@ai.mit.edu Sat May 23 06:19:34 1992 From: ian@ai.mit.edu (Ian D. Horswill) Date: Fri, 22 May 92 13:51:06 EDT To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com In-Reply-To: Willie Lim's message of Thu, 21 May 92 09:34:46 EDT <9205211334.AA01513@gdstech.grumman.com> Subject: [wlim: Survey] Hi Willie, [stuff deleted --- wlim] I have an RWI base (B12) with a small VME card-cage on top. It contains a Pentek 4283 DSP card and a Data Translation frame grabber. It has a small Chinon CX-101 video camera with a 3mm lens and a voice synthesizer. A 6811 board acts as a peripheral processor. [stuff deleted --- wlim] Macintosh w/Appletalk and TCP/IP. Downloading is via the serial port. [stuff deleted --- wlim] My own lisp cross-compiler running under Macintosh Common Lisp v. 2.0. [stuff deleted --- wlim] Senselisp, a statically typed variant of Scheme with ML-style type inference, macros, and pointer arithmetic. The implementation does not support GC or closures for obvious reasons. -ian From jar@cs.cornell.edu Tue May 26 06:30:08 1992 Date: Mon, 25 May 92 16:20:06 -0400 From: jar@cs.cornell.edu (Jonathan Rees) To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com Subject: Development Environments for Mobile Robots FYI: The Cornell Computer Science Robotics and Vision Lab has 2 mobots with: RWI 12" wheel base Gespak 68000 single-board computer (.5 Mby ROM, .25 Mbyte RAM) used for executive level control; multithreaded Scheme interpreter in ROM Custom Intel 80c196 board controlling various sensors IR proximity detectors and modem Polaroid sonar (12 transducers, with RWI control board) Speech, numeric keypad, LCD display, simple bumpers Scheme programs run autonomously, but are debugged with the help of Lucid on a workstation, attached with an RS232 tether (tether is used only for the debugging link). More mobots on the way: one with a custom tank-tread base, and one with vision. Jonathan Rees From Liscano@IIT.NRC.CA Tue May 26 14:27:03 1992 From: Liscano@IIT.NRC.CA Date: Tue, 26 May 1992 09:34 EST Subject: Mobile Robot Survey To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com X-Envelope-To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com X-Vms-To: Lim Date 5/26/92 Subject Mobile Robot Survey From Liscano To Lim Subject: Mobile Robot Survey Organization: National Research Council of Canada. Project: EAVE Robot: Customized Cybermotion. Development: MAC II's, 68020's. Languages: C, HARMONY OS (multi-tasking & multi-processing), MacAPP. Ramiro Liscano Institute for Information Technology National Research Council Bldg M-50 Montreal Rd. Ottawa, ONT. Canada K1A 0R6 Tel: (613) 993-6565 liscano@iit.nrc.ca From jar@cs.cornell.edu Tue May 26 14:27:10 1992 Date: Tue, 26 May 92 10:53:15 -0400 From: jar@cs.cornell.edu (Jonathan Rees) To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com Subject: Development Environments for Mobile Robots And for what it's worth, there's a paper describing the Cornell mobot and its development environment: Jonathan Rees and Bruce Donald. Program mobile robots in Scheme. {\em Proceedings of the 1992 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation,} pages 2681-2688. From kak@ecn.purdue.edu Tue Jun 9 07:16:22 1992 To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com Cc: kak@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: hello..... Date: Mon, 08 Jun 92 23:01:18 -0500 From: Avi Kak Willie, Looks like you completely missed out on Purdue University in your comp.robotics survey of May 23, 1992. The mobile robot PETER in the Robot Vision Lab at Purdue University is one of the earliest K2A robots made by what was then known as the Cybermation company. This robot is capable of completely autonomous indoor navigation using model-based vision. The robot is capable of maintaining a speed of approximately 10 to 12 meters per minute under vision control. This speed is not affected much by collision avoidance functions. Collision avoidance is done by using ultrasonic sensors. Further details on how the robot does this can be found in the forthcoming article Authors: A. Kosaka and A. C. Kak Title: Fast Vision-Guided Mobile Robot Navigation using Model-based Reasoning and Prediction of Uncertainties Journal: Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing -- IMAGE UNDERSTANDING, September 1992 (To appear). Attached below are the vital statistics. Avi Kak kak@ecn.purdue.edu Organization Project Robot Development Languages & Type HW Environment SW Environment ============= ============= ==== ============== ============= Purdue Navigation Cybermotion VME 68030 VxWorks, C University and K2A Control using Vision From kak@ecn.purdue.edu Tue Jun 9 13:54:48 1992 To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com (Willie Lim) Cc: kak@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: Re: ...another thing... In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 09 Jun 92 07:23:06 EDT." Date: Tue, 09 Jun 92 11:52:23 -0500 From: Avi Kak Willie, We use a Sun4 for software development. All the software is in C. Up to this time, the camera images were transmitted to the SUN4 over a video wireless link and all the vision processing was done off-board. The collision avoidance was done on-board by a 68030 supervisory processor. The supervisory processor ran a XINU microprocessor operating system developed by Prof. Doug Comer of the CS Department here. Last February we purchased a VxWorks operating system for the 68030 on-board computer. Our plan this summer is to do all processing on board and that includes all the vision processing. You might also like to know that the mobile robot has a personnel detection system that uses a combination of thermal and ultrasonic signals in an on-board neural-network based procedure. For up to 8 feet, this system has no false alarms and 100% detection accuracy. We are currently trying to increase the range of robust personnel detection, since 8 feet is simply not enough for most sponsors. Incidently, our mobile robot project is now seven years old. Being not too PR-oriented, we simply have not made too big a noise about it. We did present our work at this year's AAAI Spring Symposium. Avi P.S.: PETER stated drooling at the prospect of meeting SmartyCat. Perhaps a meeting could be arranged in the not too distant future. From vjs@kau.vtt.fi Fri Jul 17 16:10:17 1992 Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1992 13:18:02 +0300 From: Virpi Santti To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com Subject: Re: An Informal Survey of Robot Development Environment ... You asked for information about research going on among robotics about a month ago. I received this request only yesterday, but I hope You still are interested.. Well, here it comes: Akseli is the official nickname given to the autonomous mobile robot constructed in the Machine Automation Laboratory, Technical Research Center of Finland (VTT). Akseli has a self-made base with a turtle configuration: On each side there is an indepen- dently driven wheel, in the back and front there are free castor wheels. The drive wheels are controlled with HP-1100 microchips. Akseli carries now a 386-PC running MS-DOS. In the near future the operating system will be substituted by LynxOS. For the vi- sion system Akseli carries 16 solid and 5 rotating ultrasonic sensors, and 6 infrared sensors. Akseli has a radio modem link to a controlling (and monitoring) computer. The software is generat- ed using C-programming language. Akseli is built for testing different kinds of algorithms for path planning, navigation, movement control, environment percep- tion and collision avoidance. If You do need more information, do not hesitate to contact. Regards, vjs. ****************************************************************************** Virpi J. S"antti Internet: Virpi.Santti@kau.vtt.fi Research Scientist or, vjs@kau.vtt.fi Technical Research Centre of Finland Tel. +358 31 163 630 P.O. Box 192, SF-33101 Tampere, Finland Telefax +358 31 163 494 ******************************************************************************