Open-source robotics

Abstract: We present a novel, deeply embedded robotics middleware and programming environment. It uses a multithreaded, publish-subscribe design pattern and provides a Unix-like software interface for micro controller applications. We improve over the state of the art in deeply embedded open source systems by providing a modular and standards-oriented platform. Our system architecture is centered around a publish-subscribe object request broker on top of a POSIX application programming interface. This allows to reuse common Unix knowledge and experience, including a bash-like shell. We demonstrate with a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) use case that the system modularity is well suited for novel and experimental vehicle platforms. We also show how the system architecture allows a direct interface to ROS and to run individual processes either as native ROS nodes on Linux or nodes on the micro controller, maximizing interoperability. Our microcontroller-based execution environment has substantially lower latency and better hardware connectivity than a typical Robotics Linux system and is therefore well suited for fast, high rate control tasks.

Abstract: The aim of this work is to integrate and analyze the performance of a path planning method based on Time Elastic Bands (TEB) in real research platform based on Ackermann model. Moreover, it will be proved that all modules related to the navigation can coexist and work together to achieve the goal point without any collision. The study is done by analyzing the trajectory generated from global and local planners. The software prototyping tool is Robot Operating System (ROS) from Open Source Robotics Foundation and the research platform is the iCab (Intelligent Campus Automobile) from University Carlos III. This work has been validated from a test inside the campus where the iCab has performed the navigation between the starting point and the goal point without any collision. During the experiment, we proved the low sensitivity of the TEB method to variations of the vehicle model configuration and constraints.

Abstract: This paper introduces PyRobot, an open-source robotics framework for research and benchmarking. PyRobot is a light-weight, high-level interface on top of ROS that provides a consistent set of hardware independent mid-level APIs to control different robots. PyRobot abstracts away details about low-level controllers and inter-process communication, and allows non-robotics researchers (ML, CV researchers) to focus on building high-level AI applications. PyRobot aims to provide a research ecosystem with convenient access to robotics datasets, algorithm implementations and models that can be used to quickly create a state-of-the-art baseline. We believe PyRobot, when paired up with low-cost robot platforms such as LoCoBot, will reduce the entry barrier into robotics, and democratize robotics. PyRobot is open-source, and can be accessed via this https URL.