Re: [ANN] Player-Ada 2.0.3.0 released

["Alex R. Mosteo" <devnull@mailinator.com>]

Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:

> On Fri, 27 Oct 2006 12:03:10 +0200, Alex R. Mosteo wrote:
> 
>> Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
>> 
>> (snip)
>> 
>>> If I correctly understood it is not embedded, the thingy is controlled
>>> by a PC.
>> 
>> 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.
> 
> Is it role of being a sort of extension board, arithmetic booster, DSP
> board etc as in PCs of early 90s?

I think it's a standard socket for industrial PCs that allows stacking of
cards. A card can mount the CPU, another one the wireless, another some USB
ports and so on...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC/104

>> Player
>> connects to the hardware via RS232. But I suppose you refer to more
>> exotic platforms?
> 
> Nothing specific. I am just wondering if there is an architecture that
> could natively support Ada, down to actuators, sensors and real-time
> control loops.

Do you know MARTE OS? It could be useful for such an architecture and is
mostly Ada.
http://marte.unican.es/

Our robots have a proprietary OS (ARCOS) in the other side of the RS232 for
real-time control of the robot. I don't know much about it.

> [In industry actuators and sensors are connected via Ethernet (maybe
> modified) or a field bus. The latter slowly dies out. RS232 is, well,
> quite outdated.]

I don't have much experience with robots out of these ones, but USB is still
second place to RS232: even if newer SICK models have USB, our models, GPS
receivers, the robot microcontroller, the pan-tilt camera units, our
lasers, all use RS232... may be they tricked us into buying obsolescent
hardware ;)