From: wlim@gdstech.GRUMMAN.COM (Willie Lim)
Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Subject: Mobots Survey Responses (Revised 9/14/92)
Date: 28 Sep 92 18:21:04 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Grumman Corporation, Bethpage, New York, USA.

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;;; RESPONSES TO INFORMAL SURVEY ON DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTS	   ;;;
;;;                      FOR MOBILE ROBOTS			   ;;;
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;;; Updated: Mon Sep 14 07:16:31 1992 <wlim@gdstech.grumman.com>   ;;;
;;; Created: Sat May 23 09:37:24 1992 <wlim@gdstech.grumman.com>   ;;;
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;;; Maintained by: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com (for now)		   ;;;
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Organization    Project		Robot		Development		Languages &		
                		Type		HW Environment		SW Enviroment		
=============   =============	====		==============		=============		
Alcatel Alsthom Indoor robot	Own design	SPARC II, VME proc	VxWorks, MOTIF		
Recherche (AAR) Outdoor	robot	Own design							
                										
                										
Brown U.        Mobile robots	Own design	SPARC I & II,		OS/9, GNU Emacs, Xlib,	
                		(RWI base)	VME 68030		MOTIF, Forth, C, C++	
                										
CMU             a) SM^2(walker)	Own design	VME 68020 & 68030,	Chimera II RTOS, C,	
                				Sun			Sun tools		
                b) AMBLER (6	Own design	VME 68020 & 68030,	MOTIF, VxWorks,			
                   leged walker)		SPARC II, Iris		X windows, C		
                c) Mobile Mani-	HERO 2000	Z8088s, Sun IPC & ELC,	X Window, Lisp, C, Hero		
                   pulator			NeXT			Basic			

                d) Mobile robot	Own design	SPARC, Iris, Mac,	X windows, Openwindows,	
                				VME, Maspar, Titan	VxWorks, Chimera RTOS,
                							TCA, GIL, LISP
                e) Navlab	Own design	Sun-4			X windows, C		


Colorado St.    6-legged robot	Own design	68HC11EVM, AT		C			

Cornell U.	2 mobile robots	Own design	Gespak 68000, Intel	Scheme, Lucid Lisp
		(robot with	(RWI base)	80c196, Sun(?)
		tank-tread
		base coming)

Cray Research(?)Mobile robot	Own design	MC68HC16EBV, 386	Assembler		

Georgia Tech    Mobile robots	Denning	DRV-1	SUN IPC, Decstation,	X windows, C,		
                		& MRV-II	Microvax II		Lisp

Grumman CRC     SmartyCat	Cybermotion	Mac II's/IIci's,	C, CLOS, LISP, SAL		
                		K2A		uExplorer, SGI(soon)	VxWorks(soon)
						68030 VME board(soon)

IBM TJ Watson   		Own design	Symbolics, RS/6000,	LISP, CLOS, CLIM,	
                		(RWI bases)	286, 386, Suns		C, X-windows, MOTIF,
                							GNU Emacs
                									
ISX Corp        Subsumption	Own design	Mac II cx's/ci's	C(?)		
                									
JPL             7 robots	Own design	Suns to 6811		RCCL, ALFA	

MIT		20 robots	Own design	Mac II & IIsi, HC6811	Behavior Language
		Polly		Own Design	VME, 6811, Mac		Senselisp(Scheme)
				(RWI base)
                									
MITRE           Mobile robot	Denning MRV-1	MacQuadra, uExplorer	Lisp, REX/GAPPS, C, C++	

NRC of Canada	EAVE		Customized	Mac II's, 68020's	C, HARMONY OS, MacAPP
				Cybermotion                									

NC State        Mobile robot?	Own design	VME 68020 & 68040,	OS/9, P/NET	
                				Mac					

Purdue U.	PETER		Cybermotion	Sun4, 68030		C, VxWorks

Stanford        Landmark based	Nomadic		Mac IIci		C, LISP		
                Navigation								
                									
Swiss FIT       Mobile robot	Own design	Mac			MacMETH, Modula-2	
                									
U of Central    a) 6-leg walker	Own design	Commodore 64		SuperC,	C	
                b) 6-leg walker Own design	Amiga 500		C		
                									
U Wash.         Mobile robots	Denning		HP 9000 series 300's,	Gensym G2, OS/9	
						68000			LLAMA (Forth), Lisp, C

VTT (Technical	Akseli		Own  design	HP-1100, 386		MS-DOS, LynxOS (soon)
Research Center			base with				C
of Finland)			"turtle" config          

Organization    			Submitted by
=============				===========
Alcatel Alsthom Recherche (AAR)		noreils@aar.alcatel-alsthom.fr

Brown University		        kjb@cs.brown.edu

CMU					a) dstewart@IUS4.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU
					b) Reid_Simmons@FREESIA.LEARNING.CS.CMU.EDU
					c) Reid_Simmons@FREESIA.LEARNING.CS.CMU.EDU
					d) nivek@frc2.frc.ri.cmu.edu
					e) Chuck_Thorpe@IUS4.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU

Colorado State University		jn163051@longs.lance.colostate.edu

Cornell University			jar@cs.cornell.edu

Cray Research				kilian@palm.cray.com

Georgia Tech				arkin@cc.gatech.edu

Grumman CRC				wlim@gdstech.grumman.com

IBM TJ Watson				nhaas@watson.ibm.com

ISX Corp				cfriedla@isx.com

JPL					gat@robotics.Jpl.Nasa.Gov

MIT					maja@ai.mit.edu
					ian@ai.mit.edu

MITRE					slack@starbase.MITRE.ORG

NRC of Canada				Liscano@IIT.NRC.CA

North Colorado State University		aras@eceris.ece.ncsu.edu

Purdue University			kak@ecn.purdue.edu

Stanford				eno@leland.stanford.edu

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology	vestli@ifr.ethz.ch

University of Central Florida		rbc@engr.ucf.edu

University of Washington		bob@robocop.ee.washington.edu

VTT (Machine Automation Lab.,		vjs@kau.vtt.fi
Tech. Res. Ctr. of Findland)


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From cfriedla@isx.com Thu May 21 11:53:14 1992
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 92 11:41:43 PDT
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com (Willie Lim)
From: cfriedla@isx.com
Subject: Re: An Informal Survey of Robot Development Environment (an RFI)

Our group works with and builds Brooks Subsumption Robots
So we all use Mac II CX or CI .


   ***********************************************************
   *                                                         *
   *    Carl Friedlander Ph.D.              (818)706-2020    *
   *    ISX Corporation                 FAX (818)706-2056    *
   *    4353 Park Terrace Drive        Page (818)592-5410    *
   *    Westlake Village, CA 91361                           *
   *                                                         *
   ***********************************************************
   



From eno@leland.stanford.edu Thu May 21 11:53:32 1992
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 92 12:07:31 PDT
From: eno@leland.stanford.edu
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
Subject: Re:  An Informal Survey of Robot Development Environment (an RFI)

I'm working on a project on landmark based navigation, we use:

0)  A robot from Nomadic Tech. (based here in Palo Alto) which has three
rings of sensors i) 16 sonars ii) 16 infrared sensors iii) 16 fairly useless
bumpers..  the only processing done on board is control of motors and sense
cycles and communication via the radio-modem

1)  I'm using a mac IIci because basically that's what was available and I
think until recently, that was the only platform for which they'd written
an interface for.  Until now, processing power hasn't really been an issue.

2)  The interface and simulator are both written to run in Allegro Common
Lisp, which is nice.  The on board stuff for the robot is, as far as I know
(pardon my ignorance, but I haven't had to mess with it yet), C for the
6811s which written, compiled, and downloaded from any old PC with the
proper connections.

hope this helps, If you want, I can get more technical specs concerning
on board processing, sonar and IR, etc....

Ben


From noreils@aar.alcatel-alsthom.fr Thu May 21 11:53:44 1992
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 92 10:58:33 +0200
From: noreils@aar.alcatel-alsthom.fr ( Fabrice Noreils )
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
Subject: robotics

Dear Willie:

We have two robots at Alcatel Alsthom Recherche (AAR):

The first one is a robot for indoor environment and has two motorized
wheels and is equipped with a ring of 16 ultrasonic sensors and laser
stripe range finder. This work focusses on world modeling (using
sonars), navigation (obstacle avoidance and path planning), and
mission planning.

The second one is a robot for outdoor environment and has four
tiltable tracks robot equipped with force sensors, an inertial
reference system, and a laser-stripe range finder. This robot is
either teleoperated or autonomous and thus it is able to model the
terrain (with the laser-stripe) and plan a trajectory (by modifying
the orientation of the tracks).

Both Robots software run on a VME multi-processor hardware (up to 10
boards) supporting a real-time operating system (VxWorks). 

Softwares are first developed on SPARC II workstations connected to
Ethernet ( workstations run X windows and MOTIF) and are then
downloaded into robots.

If you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact me

Cheers

- fabrice

------------------------------------------------
Fabrice R. Noreils 
Research Scientist
Alcatel Alsthom Recherche
Route de Nozay
91460 Marcoussis - France
email: 	noreils@aar.alcatel-alsthom.fr
phone:  19 - 33 - 1 64 49 17 73
FAX  :  19 - 33 - 1 64 49 06 95
------------------------------------------------


From jn163051@longs.lance.colostate.edu Thu May 21 11:53:47 1992
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 92 19:20:39 MDT
From: jn163051@longs.lance.colostate.edu
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
Subject: Re: Development Environments for Mobile Robots
Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Organization: Colorado State U. Engineering College
Cc: 

Six legged walking robot, legs in stretched hexagon, each leg has three DOF,
legs activated by pneumatic cylinders, no intermediate positions 
extend/retract only, eight walking directions, spin CW/CCW, limping mode
involves walking on five legs only, speed 0.4 m/s, IR sensor detects range
and direction to reflector obstacle.

Controlled by on board motorola 68HC11EVM, code generated in C on an AT.

Regards    -Joel


From kilian@palm.cray.com Thu May 21 11:53:49 1992
Date: Sat, 25 Apr 92 11:47:40 CDT
From: kilian@palm.cray.com (Alan Kilian)
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
Subject: Re: Development Environments for Mobile Robots
Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.
Cc: kilian@timbuk.cray.com


I have a mobile robot with a rotating ultrasonic sensor.
It has a Motorola MC68HC16EBV Evaluation board mounted on it.
I use the Motorola Assembler and evb16 debugger on a Zeos Notebook 386 PC
  to develop the software.

 -Alan Kilian           kilian@cray.com 612.683.5499 (Work) 612.729.1652 (Home)
  Cray Research, Inc.   655 F Lone Oak Drive, Eagan  MN, 55121 


From vestli@ifr.ethz.ch Thu May 21 11:53:55 1992
Date: Sun, 26 Apr 92 12:49:00 +0200
From: Sjur Jonas Vestli <vestli@ifr.ethz.ch>
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com (Willie Lim)
Subject: Re: Development Environments for Mobile Robots

[stuff deleted --- wlim]

Own design, documentation available on request.

[stuff deleted --- wlim]

Macintosh, connected to robot via serial link (wireless lan
in the future when frequencies are released here), connected to setral
facilities via Appletalk.

[stuff deleted --- wlim]

Own development (on both Mac and Robot). Both based on MacMETH (Mac Modula-2
ETH). Own real time kernel for the robot.

[stuff deleted --- wlim]

Modula-2


Sjur J. Vestli
Institut fuer Robotik
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.


From kjb@cs.brown.edu Thu May 21 11:53:59 1992
Date: Sun, 26 Apr 92 12:43:29 -0400
From: kjb@cs.brown.edu (Ken Basye)
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
Subject: Dev. Env. for Mobile Robots
Reply-To: kjb@cs.brown.edu


0) We have a couple of robots built on RWI bases with Denning sonar
modules; the on-board computation is done on New Micros Inc.
68HC11-based single-board computers, which have a FORTH kernal in ROM.

1) We use SUN sparc 1's and 2's networked with ethernet (TCP/IP)

2) We edit with GNU emacs, write graphical stuff with Xlib and Motif.

3) We use FORTH on the robot, and C++ on the workstations.

-----------

We have another robot under development - here's my best guesses about
that:

0) The robot is based on a much larger RWI base (about 26 in.
diameter, 1200 W/hrs of battery power).  The on-board computer will be
a Moto. 147 - a 68030-based VME board with lots of interface,
including ethernet.  This will be running OS-9 with realtime
extensions.

1) same workstations

2) Same environment on workstations, OS-9 environment on robot

3) We'll use C or C++ on the robot instead of FORTH


From arkin@cc.gatech.edu Thu May 21 11:54:02 1992
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 92 07:32:25 -0400
From: arkin@cc.gatech.edu (Ronald Arkin)
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
Subject: Re:  An Informal Survey of Robot Development Environment (an RFI)

All I have time for:

1) Denning mobile vehicles - DRV-1, MRV-II.
2) Sparcstation IPC, Decstation 5000/120, Microvax II, ethernet links
3) Standard unix environments and tools (X windows)
4) 90% C, 10%lisp.


From dstewart@IUS4.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU Thu May 21 11:54:06 1992
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
Subject: Re: Development Environments for Mobile Robots
Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
Cc: 
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 92 8:41:18 EDT
From: dstewart@IUS4.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU

[stuff deleted --- wlim]

Self-Mobile Space Manipulator (SM^2).
    (Principle Investigators: 
	Ben Brown (hbb@ri.cmu.edu) and Takeo Kanade (tk@ri.cmu.edu))

This walking robot has been designed for space station trusses, to both
travel on it, and manipulate objects (e.g. other parts of the
truss structure, satellites, or tools required by astronauts.)
 
[stuff deleted --- wlim]

VMEbus-based system, with several Ironics MC68020 and MC68030 single
board computers (SBC).  Each SBC is running the Chimera II Real-Time
Operating System (finger 'chimera@cmu.edu' for more info on it).
The system also contains ADCs, DACs, and PIOs for I/O.  The VME
system is hosted by a Sun workstation, on which development is
performed, using standard Sun tools (e.g. cc, dbx, X or Sunview, etc.)
and the Chimera II support tools.  Communication between the Sun
and VME system is through BIT3 VME-to-VME adaptor.  The robot
is tethered, hence does not carry the computer on board.

Multiple CPUs are used to get additional performance.  All interprocessor
communication is over the VME backplane and processor transparent, 
and the capabilities are provided by Chimera II.

[stuff deleted --- wlim]

C for everything.  We also use "reconfigurable systems software" 
methodology for developing modular and reusable code (finger
'chimera@cmu.edu' for references).

Dave Stewart


From aras@eceris.ece.ncsu.edu Thu May 21 11:54:10 1992
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 92 16:12:33 -0400
From: aras@eceris.ece.ncsu.edu (Caglan M. Aras)
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
Subject: Re: Development Environments for Mobile Robots
Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Organization: North Carolina State University
Cc: 

[stuff deleted --- wlim]

We are using a 6 processor VME system (4- 68040, 2-68020) with OS/9 and
P/NET, a distributed pipe manager for multiprocessing. We also have a
datacube frame grabber and framestore. We use the VME both for
development and for the actual control. In addition we have used the
Image program on the macintosh to process some of the images before
writing specific programs on the VME system.



-- 
Caglan M. Aras			| Robotics and Intel. Systems Lab.	
RISL- Box 7911			| aras@eceris.ece.ncsu.edu
North Carolina State University | ph: 919-515-5405
Raleigh, NC 27695		| 


From nhaas@watson.ibm.com Thu May 21 11:54:16 1992
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 92 20:33:24 EDT
From: nhaas@watson.ibm.com
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
Subject: Re: comp.robotics query

[stuff deleted --- wlim]
  The short answer is that we use about 70% Symbolics, 15% RS/6000;
5% DOS machines of various flavors, and 10% Suns.  Over time, the RS6000s
will increase.  We have (as you know) 4 RWI 12" bases, and the Esched Scorbot
III arm. We have since acquired a Zebra Zero Gravity arm, specially lengthened
to our specifications.

   We use Lisp, except for Alberto, and the vision people, who use C.
Jon has lately been trying to use Microsoft Small C on one of the DOS machines.
He doesn't like its lack of debugger, or lack of decent debugger.

  On the RS6000, we use Lucid lisp, with CLOS and CLIM. It works OK for me,
but Jon does a lot of array-consing, and the garbage collector seems to have
a bug where it runs out of space eventually. (I don't see this in my work,
though.) We are still running the beta-test version they sent us last summer;
they say there'll be a new, real production version of Lucid coming in a few
weeks.  The debugger for this Lisp is OK but not great by any means.  There is
one guy around here who has Allegro; he says the debugger is really nice, but
still only about 75% of what Genera provides.  CLOS seems to have no problems
of any kind. I like CLIM a lot, especially the colors (!) and 8-bit gray
scale (Symbolics' displays have to dither to show gray), but we still have
version 1.0, which I think has some flaky (repeatable, but stupid) behavior
which I expect will be ironed out in the next release of CLIM (1.1? 2.0?).

  We of course use X-windows for everything on the AIX or UNIX machines.
Mostly use Motif (mwm); Alberto uses twm, if I remember correctly.  The
DOS machines mostly do NOT run windows, but there are 2 here that do.
(We have 286 and 386 processors; no 486's so far. All stationary. On board
the robots, only Jon's 68HC11 network, coupled by radio (ARLAN is the manu-
facturer) modems to the Symbolicses.

   Networking: Symbolics' Chaosnet, Ethernet, and PC token-ring LAN. TCP/IP,
NFS-mounting between all machines except PCs.

   We do not have VxWorks, OS-9, CONDOR, or anything like that.

   The C people on the RS6000 use something called SabreC, which they claim
is great in all respects.

    Alberto uses Khoros for image-munging, and another tool with a name like
XRS. He likes them.

   For figure document preparation, there's I-DRAW, which might be available
on both UNIX and AIX, which creates just wonderful color foils, and I gather
it's not hard to run.


   Hope this will do. Feel free to ask questions on anything I've forgotten
to address.

-Norm


From rbc@engr.ucf.edu Thu May 21 11:54:23 1992
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 92 11:38:10 EDT
From: rbc@engr.ucf.edu (Robotics Club)
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
Subject: Re: Development Environments for Mobile Robots
Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Organization: engineering, University of Central Florida, Orlando
Cc: 

[stuff deleted --- wlim]

6 legged walking machine, designed for the SAE Walking Machine
Decathlon. Each joint powered by a DC Brush motor, with feedback
being given by potentiometer. Digital sensors include foot on
ground, obtacle in leg path, and platform level. 

[stuff deleted --- wlim]

uh, a commodore 64. They are cheap, and we have had experience with
them. We use a custom made memory map controller using four 6522 
Versatile Interface Adapter chips, and one ADC8017 16 channel,
8 bit A/D. 

[stuff deleted --- wlim]

... We use SuperC, a C language compiler for the C64.
[stuff deleted --- wlim]

C


Note. We are moving to another robot, same configuration, we will
use a 68000 based Amiga 500, another custom controller card with
four 6522's and 2 ADC8017's, development environment is DICE,
Dillon's Integrated C Compiler, a Freeware C compiler. 

We use amiga's and CBM equipment due the the fact that interfacing
to the 68000 is very simple, and we use them as our own computers.
The Amiga has a very nice near-real time multitasking operating
system, which will run in 512K. WITH your code.


From nhaas@watson.ibm.com Thu May 21 11:54:27 1992
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 92 12:27:49 EDT
From: nhaas@watson.ibm.com
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
Subject: More

   I meant to mention in my previous note that the typical way to run Lisp
under AIX is to run it in a GnuEmacs buffer. With Lucid, there is no partic-
ular synergy; with Allegro, there is the ILISP package (which I think was
written at CMU), which is a suite of GnuEmacs-lisp routines that tightly
couple the editor to the lisp, so that you can do "meta-point", for instance,
and many more good things. I implemented a couple of these sorts of things
myself to work with Lucid, but didn't achieve the same level of performance,
because I was just passing text strings to *standard-input*, and Lisp read
them whenever it felt like it. The ILISP system uses a TCPIP "socket", and
starts a Lisp process which is dedicated to reading it; this process is
asynchronous with the main lisp process or processes.


From Reid_Simmons@FREESIA.LEARNING.CS.CMU.EDU Thu May 21 11:54:30 1992
To: Willie Lim <wlim@gdstech.grumman.com>
Subject: Re: [wlim: An Informal Survey of Robot Development Environment (an RFI)] 
             <9205051010.AA01323@gdstech.grumman.com> 
Date: Tue, 05 May 92 11:11:12 -0400
From: Reid Simmons <Reid_Simmons@FREESIA.LEARNING.CS.CMU.EDU>

Willie,

Sorry for the delay in responding.  I'll answer regarding my two robot
projects: the Ambler Planetary Rover and the Mobile Manipulator.
If you'd like, I could forward this on to other projects at CMU (NavLab,
HMMWV, Tessalator).

Reid

I. AMBLER: 
   0) A brief description of your robot configuration.
Ambler is a six-legged robot designed for autonomously walking across rugged
terrain, such as that found on Mars.  The Ambler features orthogonal legs
(RPP mechanisms) that decouple horizontal and vertical motions.  It has a
novel *circulating gait*, in which trailing legs recover through a central
body, past the other legs, to become the new leading leg.  The Ambler uses
a scanning laser rangefinder to provide 3D terrain maps, and six-axis force
sensors in each foot to indicate terrain contact.  The Ambler also has
incremental and absolute encoders on each joint, and two inclinometers to
indicate tilt and roll of the machine.

   1) Type of workstations (e.g. SUN, Silicon Graphics, IBM
      RS6000, HP, IBM PC/XT/AT/286/386/486, Macintosh, ...)
      used and why.  If you more than one workstation, please say how
      they are networked (e.g. ethernet with TCP/IP, Appletalk,...)
The Ambler uses 9 Creonics motion control boards for low-level servo
control.  The real-time controller is implemented using two Motorola CPU
boards that communicate via a VME backplane.  Perception and planning
software run on two on-board Sun SPARC II workstations, which communicate
with each other and the controller via thin-wire Ethernet and TCP/IP.  The
perception software communicates with the laser scanner via an S-bus to
VME-bus converter.  The various hardware choices were made mainly for
reasons of availability and compatibility with our existing development
environment.  We also make use of two simulators -- a 2D X-based simulator,
that runs on Sun workstations, and a 3D simulator running on a Silicon
Graphics IRIS workstation.

   2) The development environment used for both the workstation and
      the on-board robot  e.g. GNU software, MPW (for the
      Mac), X windows, MOTIF, VxWorks, CLIM, ...  
Operating system is standard Sun Unix for the perception and planning
software, VxWorks for the real-time controller.  User interface is done
with a combination of X and Motif.  Systems integration uses the home-grown
Task Control Architecture (TCA), a message-based system for passing data
and control information between distributed processes.  Communication
through TCA is via TCP/IP, and the architecture runs on Sun, NeXT, and RT
machines. 

   3) Languages used: C, LISP, Prolog, CLOS, ...
Development uses C exclusively.



II. Mobile Manipulator
   0) A brief description of your robot configuration.
The Mobile Manipulator project is based on a HERO 2000, which is a
2-wheeled robot with manipulator arm and gripper.  The sensors include
scanning sonar, fixed base-mounted sonar, and a pointable wrist-mounted
sonar.  There is a BW camera mounted on the robot plus a ceiling-mounted
camera for use within the laboratory.  The tasks of the Mobile Manipulator
include collecting cups from the lab floor, retrieving and delivering
printer output, recharging itself when necessary, and exploring its
surroundings.

   1) Type of workstations (e.g. SUN, Silicon Graphics, IBM
      RS6000, HP, IBM PC/XT/AT/286/386/486, Macintosh, ...)
      used and why.  If you more than one workstation, please say how
      they are networked (e.g. ethernet with TCP/IP, Appletalk,...)
The on-board processors of the HERO are Z8088s (I think).  These are
programmed to execute guarded move commands and to provide a higher-level
interface to the off-board system.  The off-board system uses standard Sun
workstations, mostly IPCs and ELCs.  We also have a speech interface to the
robot operating on a NeXT workstation.  Communications to/from the robot is
via a 9600 baud radio link.  Camera images from the robot are transmitted
via a standard Rabbit video transmitter, and digitized on a Matrox board.

   2) The development environment used for both the workstation and
      the on-board robot  e.g. GNU software, MPW (for the
      Mac), X windows, MOTIF, VxWorks, CLIM, ...  
Development is using standard Sun Unix.  User interface is via X windows
and text-based entry.  Allegro CommonLisp is used for the LISP-based
processes; the CC compiler for C-Based processes.  Systems integration of
the distributed processes is via the Task Control Architecture, which is
used to connect both the LISP and C processes.

   3) Languages used: C, LISP, Prolog, CLOS, ...
On-board software development is in HERO-Basic (sigh).  Off-board
development is in C (for the controller and perception software) and LISP
(for the planning and user-interface software).


From slack@starbase.MITRE.ORG Thu May 21 11:54:33 1992
Return-Path: <slack@starbase.mitre.org>
Date: Tue, 5 May 92 11:59:51 EDT
From: slack@starbase.MITRE.ORG (M. G. Slack)
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
Cc: bonasso@starbase.mitre.org, slack@starbase.mitre.org
Subject: [wlim@gdstech.grumman.com: An Informal Survey of Robot Development Environment (an RFI)]


Willie,

   I would like to do an informal survey of the development enviroments
   being used out there.  The things that I would be interested in are:

      0) A brief description of your robot configuration.

A Denning MRV-1 mobile robot platform, 
  -The base is synchro drive 
  -An optional head platform is installed with an independent turn axis
  -upper ring of 24 sonars at 15degree separation about 2.5 feet off the floor
  -Lower ring of 6 sonars ~eq spaced with baffels about 5 inches off the floor
  -Pitch and roll clinometers
  -IR Beacon reading system
  -Laser target reading system
  -Base processor is 68000 which communicates to the robot's subsystems
  -Additional 100 Amp Hr 24 volt power and necessary Dc-DC converters 
   to supply power to an on-board MacQuadra 
  
-  We also have a PRISM real time sterio vision system which can be mounted on
the robot and controlled to provide additional sensory information.

      1) Type of workstations (e.g. SUN, Silicon Graphics, IBM
	 RS6000, HP, IBM PC/XT/AT/286/386/486, Macintosh, ...)
	 used and why.  If you more than one workstation, please say how
	 they are networked (e.g. ethernet with TCP/IP, Appletalk,...)

The MacQuadra which is on-board uses RS232 ports to command and read the
sensors and actuators leaving the lowlevel control to the periphial computers.
Ethernet is used to down-load programs to the quadra which compiles them into a
runtime module.  There is also an RF modem which is used to send telemetry to
another macintosh which is located remotely and allows a user to observe
internal inforamtion of the robot as well as provides a mechanism for traded
control. 


      2) The development environment used for both the workstation and
	 the on-board robot  e.g. GNU software, MPW (for the
	 Mac), X windows, MOTIF, VxWorks, CLIM, ...  

Code is developed in a lisp environment (Mac Lisp or on a uExplorer) using the
REX/GAPPS languages which reside inside of lisp.  The result is a circuit
definition which implements the developed algorithm.  The circuit is then sent
to a backend which generates a simulation of the circuit in C, Lisp, ...
We use the C backend.  The C code is then sent to the robot where it is
compiled and run.

      3) Languages used: C, LISP, Prolog, CLOS, ...

C, C++, Lisp

   Please send your responses (keep them short, please) to me
   (wlim@gdstech.grumman.com).  When I get enough responses I'll post a
   summary to comp.robotics.

   Thanks in advance.



   Willie

















From gat@robotics.Jpl.Nasa.Gov Thu May 21 11:54:36 1992
Date: Tue, 5 May 92 10:01:43 PDT
From: gat@robotics.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Erann Gat)
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
Subject: Re:  An Informal Survey of Robot Development Environment (an RFI)

Unfortunately, these are not short answers in our case.  We have at
least seven mobile robot systems and four manipulators and every one
has a different setup - everything from Suns running RCCL to 6811's
running ALFA.  Perhaps if you told me why you need to know I could focus
the answer appropriately.

E.


From Reid_Simmons@FREESIA.LEARNING.CS.CMU.EDU Thu May 21 11:54:48 1992
To: Willie Lim <wlim@gdstech.grumman.com>
Subject: Re: [wlim: An Informal Survey of Robot Development Environment (an RFI)] 
             <9205061013.AA12062@gdstech.grumman.com> 
Date: Wed, 06 May 92 08:12:27 -0400
From: Reid Simmons <Reid_Simmons@FREESIA.LEARNING.CS.CMU.EDU>

[stuff deleted --- wlim]

Reid

PS In my description of the Ambler's controller, the two Motorola CPU
chips are one 68030 and one 68020.


From nivek@frc2.frc.ri.cmu.edu Thu May 21 11:54:53 1992
Date: Wed, 6 May 92 10:22:17 EDT
From: Kevin Dowling <nivek@frc2.frc.ri.cmu.edu>
To: cet@cs.cmu.edu, benny@frc2.frc.ri.cmu.edu, nivek@frc2.frc.ri.cmu.edu,
        wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
Subject: Re: [wlim: An Informal Survey of Robot Development Environment (an RFI)]


Willie,
cc: benny, cet

Most robot configurations here in Field Robotics and Vision and Autonomous Systems
are mobile systems with some advanced manipulation work going on as well
(Khosla et al).

Nearly all workstations here are Sun SPARC's with a smattering of IRIS' for
simulation and graphics although the Sun's running XGL are pretty fast.
There are a couple of Macs too but are used only for some Mac applications
and not for robot control etc. We do have special purpose hardware as well with
a number of VME based systems, Maspar parallel processor, Titan graphics machine etc.

Development evironments are UNIX usually running X11R5 and/or Openwindows environments.
VXWorks is used for real-time development on most systems and CHIMERA (home brew RTOS)
is used also for some manipulator control.

There are extensively development systems for task control and communications such
as the Task Control Architecture (TCA) and large libraries of imaging software (GIL)

Language most used is C, not for any particular religious reasons but it is
most convienent and offers HLL power and LLL flexibility. LISP is also
used to a smaller extent.

Hope this helps.

					nivek


From Chuck_Thorpe@IUS4.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU Thu May 21 11:54:55 1992
To: Willie Lim <wlim@gdstech.grumman.com>
Cc: nivek@IUS4.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU, benny@IUS4.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: Re: [wlim: An Informal Survey of Robot Development Environment (an RFI)] 
             <9205061339.AA13567@gdstech.grumman.com> 
Date: Wed, 06 May 92 17:32:57 -0400
From: Chuck_Thorpe@IUS4.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU


0)  Navlab and Navlab II mobile robots

1)  Sun-4's, for historical reasons

2)  X windows, sometimes Athena widget set

3)  C

... but all the above may change in the near future, as we look for faster
machines, look at C++, InterViews, etc.

-- Chuck


From bob@robocop.ee.washington.edu Thu May 21 11:55:08 1992
From: Robert W. Albrecht eeb537 5-1600  <bob@robocop.ee.washington.edu>
Subject: robot development environment
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
Date: Wed, 13 May 92 9:26:37 PDT
Mailer: Elm [revision: 64.9]

Per your request, here is a summary of robot development environment.

0)  ROBOTS:  2 Denning mobile robots with ultrasonics, laser
reflectometer, video, tactile bumpers, infra-red beacon detection,
wheel encoders, speech synthesis, etc.

1)  WORKSTATIONS:  7 HP 9000 series 300 workstations - ethernet TCP/IP

2)  WORKSTATION DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT:  Gensym - G2 real-time expert
system in off-board workstations.  radio link and/or wire line to
robots.  Locally developed multitasking operating system named LLAMA
on board the robots running on MC 68000 in a basic OS-9 operating
system.

3)  LANGUAGES:  Gensym - G2 off board with foreign functions in C.  G2
is basically written in LISP.  LLAMA on-board which is FORTH-like but
written in C.
--
Bob Albrecht


From maja@ai.mit.edu Thu May 21 11:55:11 1992
From: maja@ai.mit.edu (Maja J. Mataric)
Date: Thu, 21 May 92 10:48:11 EDT
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
Subject: [wlim: Survey]



Robot configuration: 

We are working with 20 small mobile robots.  The robots are
rectangular foot-long wheeled bases equipped with piezo-electric bump
sensors around the body, and a forklift for finding, carrying, and
stacking pucks.  The forklift has a suite of 6 infra-red sensors, two
for obstacle avoiding, four in the jaw for puck positioning, and two
for alignment and puck stacking.  The system also includes two radio
stations which allow the robots to triangulate their position, and
transmit and receive 8-bit messages at 1Hz.  This system allows us to
test a variety of collective and cooperative behaviors.

Workstations:
Macintosh IIsi, Macintosh II.

Development Environment:
Macitosh Allegro Common Lisp.

Languages: 

The robots are programmed in the Behavior Language, a high-level
parallel robot programming language.  The Behavior Language compiles
into the Subsumption Architecture, which further compiles into a
variety of target assemblers including HC6811 microprocessor assembler
which is what our robots use.


From ian@ai.mit.edu Sat May 23 06:19:34 1992
From: ian@ai.mit.edu (Ian D. Horswill)
Date: Fri, 22 May 92 13:51:06 EDT
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
Subject: [wlim: Survey]

Hi Willie,

[stuff deleted --- wlim]

I have an RWI base (B12) with a small VME card-cage on top.  It
contains a Pentek 4283 DSP card and a Data Translation frame grabber.
It has a small Chinon CX-101 video camera with a 3mm lens and a voice
synthesizer.  A 6811 board acts as a peripheral processor.

[stuff deleted --- wlim]

Macintosh w/Appletalk and TCP/IP.  Downloading is via the serial port.

[stuff deleted --- wlim]

My own lisp cross-compiler running under Macintosh Common Lisp v. 2.0.

[stuff deleted --- wlim]

Senselisp, a statically typed variant of Scheme with ML-style type
inference, macros, and pointer arithmetic.  The implementation does
not support GC or closures for obvious reasons.

-ian




From jar@cs.cornell.edu Tue May 26 06:30:08 1992
Date: Mon, 25 May 92 16:20:06 -0400
From: jar@cs.cornell.edu (Jonathan Rees)
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
Subject: Development Environments for Mobile Robots


FYI:

The Cornell Computer Science Robotics and Vision Lab has 2 mobots
with:

    RWI 12" wheel base
    Gespak 68000 single-board computer (.5 Mby ROM, .25 Mbyte RAM)
      used for executive level control; multithreaded Scheme
      interpreter in ROM
    Custom Intel 80c196 board controlling various sensors
    IR proximity detectors and modem
    Polaroid sonar (12 transducers, with RWI control board)
    Speech, numeric keypad, LCD display, simple bumpers

Scheme programs run autonomously, but are debugged with the help of
Lucid on a workstation, attached with an RS232 tether (tether is used
only for the debugging link).

More mobots on the way: one with a custom tank-tread base, and
one with vision.

Jonathan Rees


From Liscano@IIT.NRC.CA Tue May 26 14:27:03 1992
From: Liscano@IIT.NRC.CA
Date: Tue, 26 May 1992 09:34 EST
Subject: Mobile Robot Survey
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
X-Envelope-To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
X-Vms-To: Lim

Date	5/26/92
Subject	Mobile Robot Survey
From	Liscano
To	Lim

Subject:     Mobile Robot Survey
Organization: National Research Council of Canada.
Project: EAVE
Robot: Customized Cybermotion.
Development: MAC II's, 68020's.
Languages: C, HARMONY OS (multi-tasking & multi-processing), MacAPP.

Ramiro Liscano
Institute for Information Technology
National Research Council
Bldg M-50 Montreal Rd.
Ottawa, ONT. Canada K1A 0R6
Tel: (613) 993-6565
liscano@iit.nrc.ca




From jar@cs.cornell.edu Tue May 26 14:27:10 1992
Date: Tue, 26 May 92 10:53:15 -0400
From: jar@cs.cornell.edu (Jonathan Rees)
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
Subject: Development Environments for Mobile Robots

And for what it's worth, there's a paper describing the Cornell mobot
and its development environment:

Jonathan Rees and Bruce Donald.
Program mobile robots in Scheme.
{\em Proceedings of the 1992 IEEE International Conference on
  Robotics and Automation,} pages 2681-2688.


From kak@ecn.purdue.edu Tue Jun  9 07:16:22 1992
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
Cc: kak@ecn.purdue.edu
Subject: hello.....
Date: Mon, 08 Jun 92 23:01:18 -0500
From: Avi Kak <kak@ecn.purdue.edu>



 Willie,


 	Looks like you completely missed out on Purdue University in your
	comp.robotics survey of May 23, 1992.

	The mobile robot PETER in the Robot Vision Lab at Purdue University
	is one of the earliest K2A robots made by what was then known as
	the Cybermation company.

	This robot is capable of completely autonomous indoor navigation using
	model-based vision. The robot is capable of maintaining a speed of
	approximately 10 to 12 meters per minute under vision control. This
	speed is not affected much by collision avoidance functions. Collision
	avoidance is done by using ultrasonic sensors.

	Further details on how the robot does this can be found in the
	forthcoming article


	   Authors:  A. Kosaka and A. C. Kak
	   
	   Title:    Fast Vision-Guided Mobile Robot Navigation using
	             Model-based Reasoning and Prediction of Uncertainties
		     
           Journal:  Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing -- IMAGE
	             UNDERSTANDING, September 1992 (To appear).
		     

		     
        Attached below are the vital statistics.


				     			Avi Kak
							
							kak@ecn.purdue.edu



Organization    Project		Robot		Development		Languages &
                		Type		HW Environment		SW Environment
=============   =============	====		==============		=============	

 Purdue         Navigation      Cybermotion     VME 68030              VxWorks, C
 University     and             K2A 
                Control
		using
		Vision 

                									
											


From kak@ecn.purdue.edu Tue Jun  9 13:54:48 1992
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com (Willie Lim)
Cc: kak@ecn.purdue.edu
Subject: Re: ...another thing... 
Date: Tue, 09 Jun 92 11:52:23 -0500
From: Avi Kak <kak@ecn.purdue.edu>


  
  Willie,

  	We use a Sun4 for software development. All the software is in C.

	Up to this time, the camera images were transmitted to the SUN4
	over a video wireless link and all the vision processing was
	done off-board. The collision avoidance was done on-board by
	a 68030 supervisory processor. The supervisory processor ran a
	XINU microprocessor operating system developed by Prof. Doug
	Comer of the CS Department here.

	Last February we purchased a VxWorks operating system for the
	68030 on-board computer. Our plan this summer is to do all
	processing on board and that includes all the vision processing.

	You might also like to know that the mobile robot has a personnel
	detection system that uses a combination of thermal and ultrasonic
	signals in an on-board neural-network based procedure. For up to
	8 feet, this system has no false alarms and 100% detection accuracy.
	We are currently trying to increase the range of robust personnel
	detection, since 8 feet is simply not enough for most sponsors.
	
	Incidently, our mobile robot project is now seven years old. Being
	not too PR-oriented, we simply have not made too big a noise about
	it. We did present our work at this year's AAAI Spring Symposium.

						   Avi



						   
 P.S.: PETER stated drooling at the prospect of meeting SmartyCat.
       Perhaps a meeting could be arranged in the not too distant
       future.



From vjs@kau.vtt.fi Fri Jul 17 16:10:17 1992
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1992 13:18:02 +0300
From: Virpi Santti <vjs@kau.vtt.fi>
To: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com
Subject: Re: An Informal Survey of Robot Development Environment ...


You asked for information about research going on among robotics about 
a month ago. I received this request only yesterday, but I hope You still
are interested.. Well, here it comes:

Akseli is the official nickname given to  the  autonomous  mobile
robot constructed in the Machine Automation Laboratory, Technical
Research Center of Finland (VTT). Akseli  has  a  self-made  base
with  a  turtle  configuration: On each side there is an indepen-
dently driven wheel, in the back and front there are free  castor
wheels. The drive wheels are controlled with HP-1100 microchips.

Akseli carries now a 386-PC running MS-DOS. In  the  near  future
the  operating  system will be substituted by LynxOS. For the vi-
sion system Akseli carries 16 solid  and  5  rotating  ultrasonic
sensors, and 6 infrared sensors. Akseli has a radio modem link to
a controlling (and monitoring) computer. The software is generat-
ed using C-programming language.

Akseli is built for testing different  kinds  of  algorithms  for
path  planning, navigation, movement control, environment percep-
tion and collision avoidance.

If You do need more information, do not hesitate to contact.

Regards, 
vjs.

******************************************************************************
Virpi J. S"antti			     Internet: Virpi.Santti@kau.vtt.fi
Research Scientist			     or,       vjs@kau.vtt.fi
Technical Research Centre of Finland	     Tel.    	+358 31 163 630
P.O. Box 192, SF-33101 Tampere, Finland	     Telefax  	+358 31 163 494
******************************************************************************