CLARAty: Challenges and Steps toward Reusable Robotic Software

Abstract

We present in detail some of the challenges in developing reusable robotic software. We base that on our experience in developing the CLARAty robotics software, which is a generic object-oriented framework used for the integration of new algorithms in the areas of motion control, vision, manipulation, locomotion, navigation, localization, planning and execution. CLARAty was adapted to a number of heterogeneous robots with different mechanisms and hardware control architectures. In this paper, we also describe how we addressed some of these challenges in the development of the CLARAty software.

Multi-Robot Systems and Distributed Intelligence: The ETHNOS Approach to Heterogeneity

“…Services provided range from inter-process communications, support for code reusability and fast-prototyping, hardware simulation. Examples are Player/Stage (Gerkey et al, 2003), MIRO (Utz et al, 2002), Marie (Cotè et al, 2006), CLARATy (Nesnas et al 2006), SmartSoft (Schlegel 2006). A joint effort in this sense is the OROCOS project: www.orocos.org), whereas code reusability and portability in robotics is especially addressed in (Alami et al, 2000).…”

A Design Framework for Sensor Integration in Robotic Applications

“…They can be used in combination with our framework, which specifies the functionality and the behavior for sensor-guided applications. Some other popular middleware platforms for mobile robots are the Player/Stage/Gazebo (Vaughan et al 2003), the CARMEN (Montemerlo et al 2003), the MIRO (Utz et al 2002), and the CLARAty (Nesnas et al 2006). Many other attempts have been made to implement open control objects through the introduction of class or component libraries.…”

Robotics Middleware: A Comprehensive Literature Survey and Attribute-Based Bibliography

“…A client program communicates with Player, running on the robot, using a separate TCP socket connection for data transfer. Coupled Layer Architecture for Robotic Autonomy (CLARAty) [7,[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] is an attempt by NASA, through collaboration with the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Ames Research Center, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Minnesota. OpenRTMaist [27][28][29][30][31][32] is a software platform developed by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology-Intelligent Systems Research Institute.…”