[Xenomai-help] [ANNOUNCE] Orocos Real-Time Toolkit 1.0

[Xenomai-help] [ANNOUNCE] Orocos Real-Time Toolkit 1.0

[Peter Soetens]

 The "Open Robot Control Software" (Orocos) project uses Xenomai
 for realising its real-time behaviour.

               The Orocos Real-Time Toolkit v1.0.0.
                       http://www.orocos.org
               ====================================

 The Orocos development team is proud to announce the first stable
 release of the Real-Time Toolkit (RTT), a C++ toolkit for building
 component based, real-time robotics and machine control applications.

 A new community website has been created in order to provide Orocos
 users a forum for collaboration and easier access to information.

 The website features also the releases of:

    * the 'Kinematics and Dynamics Library' (KDL) for calculating
    kinematic chains in real-time applications;

    * the 'Orocos Components Library' (OCL) which offers components
    for hardware access (such as vision or force sensors), motion
    control and component management;

    * the 'Bayesian Filtering Library' (BFL) which provides an
    application independent framework for inference in Dynamic
    Bayesian Networks.

 The Real-Time Toolkit 1.0 allows rapid software component development
 and prototyping for control applications. Each component comes with
 built-in XML configuration, a real-time scripting interface, data
 ports for thread-safe data exchange and a user definable command
 interface.

 The powerful Orocos 'TaskBrowser' component helps developers
 to run and debug their components, stand-alone or in a network and
 helps eliminating recompilation steps during development.

 *******************************************************************
*    See the http://www.orocos.org website for all information      *
 *******************************************************************

Re: [Xenomai-help] [ANNOUNCE] Orocos Real-Time Toolkit 1.0

[Jan Kiszka]

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Peter Soetens wrote:
>  The "Open Robot Control Software" (Orocos) project uses Xenomai
>  for realising its real-time behaviour.
> 
>                The Orocos Real-Time Toolkit v1.0.0.
>                        http://www.orocos.org
>                ====================================
> 
>  The Orocos development team is proud to announce the first stable
>  release of the Real-Time Toolkit (RTT), a C++ toolkit for building
>  component based, real-time robotics and machine control applications.

Congratulations to this milestone! Really nice, professional work.

Could you elaborate a bit on the degree of Xenomai integration? What is
working, what might be missing (compared to other RTOS ports)? What is
the status of driver support? And were you able to collect any practical
experience on larger setups over Xenomai already?

Jan


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Re: [Xenomai-help] [ANNOUNCE] Orocos Real-Time Toolkit 1.0

[Peter Soetens]

On Monday 13 November 2006 13:54, Jan Kiszka wrote:
> Peter Soetens wrote:
> >  The "Open Robot Control Software" (Orocos) project uses Xenomai
> >  for realising its real-time behaviour.
> >
> >                The Orocos Real-Time Toolkit v1.0.0.
> >                        http://www.orocos.org
> >                ====================================
> >
> >  The Orocos development team is proud to announce the first stable
> >  release of the Real-Time Toolkit (RTT), a C++ toolkit for building
> >  component based, real-time robotics and machine control applications.
>
> Congratulations to this milestone! Really nice, professional work.
>
> Could you elaborate a bit on the degree of Xenomai integration? What is
> working, what might be missing (compared to other RTOS ports)? 

Well, I'd like to share our very positive experiences with Xenomai. The 
Real-Time Toolkit only uses a handful of RTOS primitives, so Xenomai is fully 
supported, as well since the RTT does not have any device drivers (that's now 
in the Component's Library). Especially debugging Xenomai programs starts 
working really well. Some of our new projects use Xenomai exclusively.

> What is
> the status of driver support? And were you able to collect any practical
> experience on larger setups over Xenomai already?

The components which address hardware were written for RTAI/LXRT some years 
ago. We're building up experience with the RTDM and a port is a matter of 
time, although that is in the hands of our friends at the university (which 
have said hardware).

Especially the clean API, solid separation kernel/userspace in headers and 
robustness make a Xenomai build really reliable, even across Linux/Xenomai 
versions. Shame it didn't exist 5 years ago.... :-)

Peter

-- 
Peter Soetens -- FMTC -- <http://www.fmtc.be>

Re: [Xenomai-help] [ANNOUNCE] Orocos Real-Time Toolkit 1.0

[Jan Kiszka]

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Peter Soetens wrote:
> On Monday 13 November 2006 13:54, Jan Kiszka wrote:
>> What is
>> the status of driver support? And were you able to collect any practical
>> experience on larger setups over Xenomai already?
> 
> The components which address hardware were written for RTAI/LXRT some years 
> ago. We're building up experience with the RTDM and a port is a matter of 
> time, although that is in the hands of our friends at the university (which 
> have said hardware).

Likely redundant to tell: Feedback is always welcome. There is still
enough untilled land to form according to concrete requirements!

> 
> Especially the clean API, solid separation kernel/userspace in headers and 
> robustness make a Xenomai build really reliable, even across Linux/Xenomai 
> versions. Shame it didn't exist 5 years ago.... :-)

We are working on that time machine thing.

Jan


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Re: [Xenomai-help] [ANNOUNCE] Orocos Real-Time Toolkit 1.0

[Klaas Gadeyne]

>> What is
>> the status of driver support? And were you able to collect any practical
>> experience on larger setups over Xenomai already?
>
> The components which address hardware were written for RTAI/LXRT some years
> ago. We're building up experience with the RTDM and a port is a matter of
> time, although that is in the hands of our friends at the university (which
> have said hardware).

>From my point of view, the only reason why most of the existing (and
some of the new) applications have not being converted to xenomai is
the fact that most applications make extensive use of comedi (in
real-time, that is).  We are thus eagerly awaiting comedi-over-rtdm,
but time lacks to help speed up the development ourselves :-(

regards,

Klaas