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From: mosteo@gmail.com
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Player-Ada 2.0.3.0 released
Date: 28 Oct 2006 02:53:08 -0700
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Date: 2006-10-28T02:53:08-07:00
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Jeffrey R. Carter ha escrito:

> Alex R. Mosteo wrote:
> >
> > Well, no and yes. In our case, the Pioneer robots have an embedded board
> > with PC/104 socket that allows to have a x86 platform running linux. Player
> > connects to the hardware via RS232. But I suppose you refer to more exotic
> > platforms?
>
> I don't know if it's the question Kazakov was asking, but what I'd like
> to know is: Does the robot have to be connected to the PC (RS232) in
> order to function?

If your question is if you can flash some program inside the robot
microcontroller and completely forget about the serial and external
things, I think the answer is no, or not easily. The robot's
microcontroller is documented and its OS is upgradeable. I don't think
the documentation says enough to replace the  OS with something else,
but certainly this is not the use the manufacturer has in mind. The
intended use for the robot is via serial. You'd also have other
problems: the microcontroller has access to wheels and sonars, but not
to laser that is a completely isolated entity. Maybe you could use the
now unused serial to link these two.

ITOH, nothing mandates that the client (user) side of the serial is a
PC. The protocol is documented so you could use whatever you want. In
fact the robot can be purchased with or without embedded PC. Without
it, you need either a radio serial, a laptop to put on the robot, or
something else. The advantage of a PC is that you have out-of-the box
the proprietary software provided, and Player as an open source option.

If you're concerned with a full real-time solution, this is doable: the
microcontroller OS is RT and the periods of wheel encoders and sonars
feedback are documented. So nothing precludes using some RT-Linux or
other RTOS in the client side.

(Actually, these Pioneer robots are popular within the robotic
community. You can probably find other PC software interfaces as well.
CARMEN comes to mind).

http://carmen.sourceforge.net/hardware.html