A Pioneer 3-AT robot in the Gazebo 3D simulation environment. |
|
| Developer(s) | Brian Gerkey, Richard Vaughan, Andrew Howard, and Nathan Koenig |
|---|---|
| Stable release | Player 3.0.2 / June 28, 2010 |
| Operating system | Linux, Solaris, BSD, Mac OS X |
| Type | Robotics suite |
| License | GNU General Public License |
| Website | Official Webpage |
The Player Project (formerly the Player/Stage Project or Player/Stage/Gazebo Project) is a project to create free software for research into robotics and sensor systems [1]. Its components include the Player network server and Stage and Gazebo robot platform simulators. Although accurate statistics are hard to obtain, Player is one of the most popular open-source robot interfaces in research and post-secondary education[2]. Most of the major intelligent robotics journals and conferences regularly publish papers featuring real and simulated robot experiments using Player, Stage and Gazebo.
Contents |
The Player Project is an umbrella under which three robotics-related software projects are currently developed. These include the Player networked robotics server, the Stage 2D robot simulation environment, and the Gazebo 3D robot simulation environment. The project was founded in 2000 by Brian Gerkey, Richard Vaughan and Andrew Howard at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles, and is widely used in robotics research and education.[3] It releases its software under the GNU General Public License with documentation under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Being that the software is GPL and open source, Player Project is free in both senses (free as in free-beer and free as in free-speech).
The Player software runs on POSIX-compatible operating systems, including Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, the BSD variants, and Microsoft Windows. Player can be described as a 'robot abstraction layer,' in that all devices are abstracted into a set of pre-defined interfaces.
Player supports a wide variety of hardware (sensor devices and robot platforms alike)[4]. It also contains client library support for a number of programming languages including C, C++, Python and Ruby. Third-party client libraries are available in languages like Java and Tcl. Additional features include a minimal and flexible design, support for interfacing with multiple devices concurrently, and on-the-fly server configuration.
The Stage simulator is a 2D multiple-robot simulation environment built on top of FLTK. Stage provides a basic simulation environment that can be scaled to model one to hundreds of robots at a time. Stage can be used alone to simulate robot behaviors via user-defined control programs. Stage can also interface with Player, allowing users of the Player to access simulated sensors and devices through the Player interfaces.
The Gazebo simulator is a 3D robot simulation environment built on top of OGRE. Gazebo, like Stage, can be used alone, or accessed through the Player server.