Robot software

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Robot software is the coded commands that tell a mechanical device (known as robots) what tasks to perform and control it's actions. Robot software is used to perform tasks and automate tasks to be performed. Programming robots is a non-trivial task. Many software systems and frameworks have been proposed to make programming robots easier.

Some robot software aims at developing intelligent mechanical devices. Though common in science fiction stories, such programs are yet to become common-place in reality and much development is yet required in the field of artificial intelligence before they even begin to approach the science fiction possibilities. Pre-programmed hardware may include feedback loops such that they can interact with their environment, but do not display actual intelligence.

Currently, malicious programming of robots is of some concern, particularly where large industrial robots. The power and size of industrial robots means they are capable of inflicting severe injury if programmed incorrectly or used in an unsafe manner. One such incident occurred on 21 July 1984 when a man was crushed to death by an industrial robot. That incident was an accident, but shows the potential risks of working with robots. In science fiction, the Three Laws of Robotics were developed for robot to obey and avoid malicious actions.

1 Robotics Software Projects
2 Robotics Linux Kernel Drivers
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Robotics Software Projects

Dave's Robotic Operating System (DROS) Free Software for the robotics researcher or hobbiest.
Player/Stage Project - A very popular Free Software robot interface and simulation system, used for robotics research and teaching worldwide.
Pyro, Python Robotics - Popular robotics Free Software used in universities and colleges. Easy to use, yet powerful, allows students and researchers to write high-level programs to explore Artificial Intelligence and robotics without worrying about low-level details.
OROCOS - the Open Robot Control Software project provides a Free Software toolkit for realtime robot arm and machine tool control.
Robot Intelligence Kernel
MARIE - Mobile and Autonomous Robotics Integration Environment - is a Free Software using a component-based approach to build robotics software systems by integrating previously-existing and new software components.
URBI - based on a new programming language integrating parallelism and event-driven programming together with an object/component approach to give an easy way to program any robot with the same interface. URBI is developed by Gostai Corporation; free versions and GPL contributions are available.
roboDNA - RoboDNA researches Dashboard technologies used to operate robots from a PC, including a free version for the Lego NXT.
ORCA - an open-source framework for developing component-based robotic systems. It provides the means for defining and developing the building-blocks which can be pieced together to form arbitrarily complex robotic systems, from single vehicles to distributed sensor networks.
Microsoft Robotics Studio - Available as a "technology preview" free download.
ARIA API libraries from MobileRobots, Inc.