Pioneer operating system research.

The manufactures wiki on the robots: http://robots.mobilerobots.com/wiki/Main_Page

P-LOGO: http://www.macalester.edu/research/fox/pioneer/logoman.pdf
Saphira: http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~hager/Public/ICRAtutorial/Konolige-Salphira/saphira.pdf
Aria: Can be found on the wiki.
ALLYU: Pretty elusive on the web. I can't find must info about this.

P-LOGO:

Some important information:

• P-LOGO is an interpreted programming language for operation of a Pioneer Mobile Robot or its software simulator.
  
• It is an extension of the very popular LOGO programming language (so, not C) and is developed from the LOGO Interpreter and related software.
  
• The Windows95/NT version of P-LOGO comes on disk with every Pioneer Mobile Robot.
  
• P-LOGO is built upon the Pioneer Application Interface (PAI) and Saphira, which are libraries of C functions and definitions for control of a Pioneer Mobile Robot and its simulator.
  

Pros:

• Has software already developed for connecting to and interfacing the rover to the laptop.
  
• Already has easy to use and understand functions to control rover movement (including moving foward/backward, turning, velocity, stop)
  
• Provides built-in collision avoidance and stall detection.
  
• Comes with simulation software and sonar capabilities.
  
• Has a 2D position recording system.
  
• Can even report rover battery levels.
  

Cons:

• Not done in C. So, if we used this O/S we would have to develop a wrapper or some sort of interface between C and this.
  

***Important Information***

Saphira is an architecture for mobile robot control. With Saphira 8.x, the Saphira system has been split into two parts. Lower-level routines have been reorganized and re-implemented as a separate software system, Aria. Aria is developed and maintained by ActivMedia Robotics. It is a production-level system for robot control, based on an extensive set of C++ classes. The class structure of Aria makes it easy to expand and develop new programs: for example, to add new sensor drivers to the system. The Saphira/Aria system can be thought of as two architectures, with one built on top of the other. The system architecture, implemented entirely in Aria, is an integrated set of routines for communicating with and controlling a robot from a host computer. The system architecture is designed to make it easy to define robot applications by linking in client programs. Because of this, the system architecture is an open architecture. Users who wish to write their own robot control systems, but don’t want to worry about the
intricacies of hardware control and communication, can take advantage of the micro-tasking and state
reflection properties of the system architecture to bootstrap their applications.

Saphira’s contribution to the control architecture contains a rich set of representations and routines for processing
sensory input, building world models, and controlling the actions of the robot.

Pros:

• It is tedious for robot control programs to deal with the issues of packet communication. So, Saphira
incorporates an internal state reflector to mirror the robot’s state on the host computer.

• Mobile robots operate in a geometric space, and the representation of that space is critical to their
performance. There are two main geometrical representations in Saphira. They are LPS and GMS.

• Saphira 8.x incorporates a new, efficient method for planning optimal paths in real time.

Saphira implements an efficient Markov Localization
algorithm for taking information from sonars or laser range-finders, matching it to map structures in the
GMS, then updating the robot’s position.

To manage complex goal-seeking activities, Saphira provides a method of scheduling actions of the
robot using a new control language, called Colbert.



Cons:

• Aria is a multi-robot control system, with a class structure set up to handle multiple instances of robot
controllers. Currently, Saphira is oriented towards controlling a single robot. In the immediate future, we
plan on providing access to Aria’s multi-robot facilities through Saphira.

• Saphira is a powerful tool, but developers are severely constrained by having to strictly follow a particular behavioural model and fuzzy logic rules.

Saphira is written in the C++ language

ARIA, Manufacturer Operating system.

PROS:

• Programming Environment Windows with MS Visual C++ .NET (7.1).
  
• ARIA also includes a library called ArNetworking which implements an extensible infrastructure for easy remote network operations for your robots, user interfaces, and other networked services
  
• ARIA comes with full source code under the GNU General Public License
  
• Provides a choice of simple low level and higher level commands to move and steer the robot.
  
• Provides a means to create a 2D mapping of the room and list its 2D location using SonARL

CONS:
Is used as a wrapper for most other Operating systems like Saphria.