Roby 0.7 Released

Ruby
1

roby version 0.7 has been released!

Note for Gem users While using the normal RDoc generator, the
documentation generation process of Roby is a bit modified. In
particular, the
plugin documentation is separated from the core documentation, and a
clearer
template is used instead of the standard one. RubyGems does not support
any
kind of customization in that area, so I would strongly suggest that
you use
the documentation provided at http://roby.rubyforge.org instead of the
RubyGem-generated one.

What is Roby ?

Roby is a plan manager: it allows to represent, execute and adapt a
plan, which
is a representation of the past, present and future activities of a
robot along
with the information needed to verify that their executin is going well,
and to
manage errors.

Roby is:

  • a task/event model in which one can represent the activities
    (Roby::Task) and
    the noticeable situations during execution (Roby::EventGenerator,
    Roby::Task.event).
  • a set of task relations describing the interactions between the
    activities
    (Roby::TaskStructure).
  • a set of event relations describing the reaction the system should
    have in
    response to some situations (Roby::EventStructure).
  • error management tools which allow to catch errors during execution
    and
    repair them (i.e. let the system manage the error).
  • a mean to modify the plan as it is being executed (Roby::Transaction)
  • (G)UI tools for interacting/controlling the living system.
  • all of that in a multi-robot context.

Acknowledgments

This work has been supported by the DGA (http://www.defense.gouv.fr/dga)
which
financed my PhD and the LAAS/CNRS (http://www.laas.fr), where I did it.
It is
now supported by the DFKI (http://www.dfki.de) where I currently work
and use
this plan manager.

Related publications

Roby is the result of my PhD. As such, my PhD thesis can be considered
as a
design document for the system. If you want an overview of the
principles, you
can also refer to the two publications I did.

See {this page}[link:files/doc/papers_rdoc.html] for the list of
publication
and the associated PDF files.

Videos

The videos that are available show some capabilities of the system. They
are also referenced in other parts of the API documentation (in
particular in the tutorials), when it is meaningful.

See {here}[link:files/doc/videos_rdoc.html] for the available videos.

Tutorials

A set of tutorials describe Roby’s main features and let you experiment
with
them:

  1. the
    GettingStarted[link:files/doc/tutorials/01-GettingStarted_rdoc.html]
    tutorial makes
    you start a brand new Roby application and explains its structure.
  2. the GoForward[link:files/doc/tutorials/02-GoForward_rdoc.html]
    tutorial shows how to create
    a simple task, how to start the Roby controller and how to interact
    with it
    using a shell.
  3. the PlannedPath[link:files/doc/tutorials/03-PlannedPath_rdoc.html]
    tutorial
    shows how to create a (slightly) more complex plan, using the
    plan-generation
    capabilities of Roby. It also shows some properties of that plan.
  4. the
    EventPropagation[link:files/doc/tutorials/04-EventPropagation_rdoc.html]
    tutorial describes how the plan execution actually goes, with
    examples from
    Roby’s plan execution display (requires to have QtRuby)
  5. the
    ErrorHandling[link:files/doc/tutorials/05-ErrorHandling_rdoc.html]
    tutorial shows how errors are represented in the system, and how it
    is possible
    to handle and repair them.
  6. {not really a
    tutorial}[link:files/doc/tutorials/06-Overview_rdoc.html], but
    an overview of features that have not been presented in the first
    five
    tutorials.

License

Copyright 2006-2007, LAAS/CNRS [email protected]
Copyright 2006-2008, Sylvain J. [email protected]
Copyright 2008 DFKI [email protected]

This work is licensed under the CeCiLL-B license, which is a free
software
license with the same spirit than the BSD license. See License.txt for
details,
and License-fr.txt for the french version.

Changes:

0.7