New OpenJAUS free robotics software

[openjaus]

OpenJAUS Robotics Toolkit Enables Developers to Quickly Implement Standardized Interoperable Systems

The OpenJAUS development group has announced the release of their latest code base, OpenJAUSv3.3.0.
OpenJAUS is an open source development kit for creating interoperable robotic systems. It provides a cross
platform framework that allows multiple organizations to integrate their robotic systems. This common
methodology for command and control makes the systems capable of seamless interoperation. The latest code
release has been in development for over nine months, and it has been in closed beta testing for the past three
months with various groups from industry and academia. OpenJAUS is run by a collective of active members in
the autonomous vehicle community that have a variety of experience as robotic system designers, implementers
and software developers.

OpenJAUSv3.3.0 conforms to the Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems (JAUS) (www.jauswg.org)
reference architecture version 3.3 and SAE AS-4 data transport protocols. The latest release contains a complete
message library that supports: dynamic discovery, mission planning, world modeling, robotic manipulators,
various unmanned vehicle platforms, and more. OpenJAUS also provides a runtime node manager that allows
the system to execute in a distributed computing environment by automatically discovering and routing
messages to multiple nodes. A simple component framework API allows developers to quickly integrate their
software into a new system. These features can be applied to predominant academic and civil robotics activities.
OpenJAUS offers comparable performance to products such as Microsoft Robotics Studio and Evolution
Robotics ESRP.

The original OpenJAUS codebase was released publicly in 2006 as a result of efforts by graduate students at the
University of Florida who developed it for the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. It has shown proven reliability
and interoperability with many existing JAUS toolkits at various experiments coordinated by the JAUS
Working Group over the past three years. OpenJAUS is released under a BSD-style license which allows for
full integration with commercial products and imposes the least restriction on companies wishing to expand
their market by including JAUS compatibility within their systems.

The new release is a vast improvement from previous releases of OpenJAUS as many more messages have been
added and the node manager has been redesigned to improve modularity and performance. Code documentation
is provided through online tutorials that show new users how to get started and migrate existing code. Please
visit www.openjaus.com to learn more.

[Admin]

Quickly reading through it all, I'm still unclear on exactly what JAUS does. It looks mostly like a collection of source code . . .

Reading around it appears it can be used on Windows/Linux/x86/ARM9 . . .

I went to the getting started section, and I'm entirely unclear whats going on . . . sorry dude but your documentation is a bit too sparse

I'm interested in simulation, but no info yet . . .
http://www.openjaus.com/tutorials/run_ojvehiclesim_tutorial.html

[izua]

I believe it's an open implementation for the JAUS message format. Little experience with it, whatsoever, never got a hang of the protocol.

[openjaus]

Thanks for your feedback. You make a good point. The documentation is a little open ended for the new to JAUS developer.

Here is a simple breakdown of what it is. JAUS is basically a common messaging protocol for robots. Sort of like http or ftp for the web. It allows robots and operator control units (OCUs) to send data between each other in a common format. The messages are standardized so all of the robots and OCUs speak the same language. They describe things like: the robot's position and orientation, velocity, etc. There are also messages to exchange command and control information. This allows an OCU to take control of different robotic vehicles without needing to change how it commands each vehicle because each vehicle uses the same protocol.  The idea here is that if 10 different people each build a robot, and 1 person builds an OCU, then that 1 OCU can control all of the vehicles, so it helps a lot if you want your robot to work with other people's systems.

OpenJAUS provides a library of all the standard JAUS messages. So it makes it easier to use JAUS on your robot, because you don't have to write the code to do all of the standard messaging. The OpenJAUS node manager program is the runtime part of OpenJAUS. It is sort of like the communication backbone for a JAUS system. Each computer on an ethernet network of JAUS enabled robots and OCUs has a node manager. The node managers automatically discover each other, and figure out how to route the messages to all JAUS enabled programs on the network.

The whole idea here is that if your robot or group of robots uses any kind of distributed computing, then JAUS will help you send information between all of the cpus. OpenJAUS makes this development as quick as possible.

Hope this helps! 

[openjaus]

This might help as well:

http://www.openjaus.com/faq.html

[izua]

You are talking about vehicles,then about ethernet. How come? Do vehicles need to be tethered?
What about the actual robot code? Considering the control node can be a computer, not all robots can afford this luxury. I'm sure you know that implementing TCP on such is a system is quite a hassle.

Also, there's another thing that intrigued me. How can you actually control velocity? Doesn't that mean you can somehow get instant acceleration and braking? 

[openjaus]

Izua, good questions! In many of the JAUS systems developed to date, they have used Ethernet on board to network a set of computers and microcontrollers that control the robot. Usually one computer acts as a bridge to other robots and OCUs, by connecting to both the internal node network and a wireless "subsystem" network that either uses 802.11 or some other wireless Ethernet product.

Many simple robots do not use a network of computers for control, but rather only one cpu or microcontroller. In this case the robot still uses some kind of wireless Ethernet to connect to the subsystem network. This is why OpenJAUS is written purely in C/C++. Any cpu that has a compiler for these languages can take advantage of the framework that OpenJAUS JAUS provides. In fact, this usually leads to a lot of fun, because a group of people that all use OpenJAUS can bring their robots together and create a system that uses cooperative robots, kind of like robot soccer. Each robot speaks JAUS, so as long as the robot builders agree on the messages that the robots will exchange, then each robot can be built individually, instead of completely together.

To answer your last question, velocity is usually controlled by sending brake and acceleration commands to the robots actuators (of whatever kind). The acceleration and braking commands aren't instant, but they're fast enough to do the job. Just like your legs can't control the throttle and brake in your car instantly, but they're still able to regulate the speed!