Orca: Components for Robotics

Orca is an open-source framework for developing component-based robotic systems. It provides the means for defining and developing the building-blocks which can be pieced together to form arbitrarily complex robotic systems, from single vehicles to distributed sensor networks.

Our main goal is the continuing progress in robotic research and the robotic industry. The main challenge we see at present is the software specific to robots, both its complexity and the sheer amount of it. Software reuse promises a solution to both of these problems. You write your component which does something useful, then I build on your success by writing my component which works with yours. Now the two of us have a system of two components. Easy!

Where to start

• Read general information about the project: Orca Overview
• Get set up: Download and Install Orca
• Start running components: Quick-Start Guide
• Read an overview of Ice middleware: Ch. 2 of the Ice Manual [download]
• See a list of all available Orca software: Software Map
• Start coding: Guide to Beginning Development (read this if you want to evaluate Orca)
• Browse through examples: Orca Component Examples
• Become an expert: Developer's Guide

Note: The documentation on the Orca website matches the latest release, not the latest code in SVN HEAD. See documentation notes for details.

News

• 18-Nov-09 Version 9.11.0 Merged Hydro back into the main project. Lots of changes and improvements. Switched to new versioning scheme identical to GearBox. See Release Notes for details.
• 01-Mar-09 Version 2.13.0 Our meatiest release to date. Lots of changes under the hood. New components related to images and cameras. Substantial contributions by new developers. Check out the updated list of current users of Orca. Big thanks to all. See Release Notes for details.
• 11-Oct-08 Version 2.12.0 Numerous improvements and bug fixes targeting long-term operation. Plus a complete re-write of OrcaView3d. See Release Notes for details.
• 23-Jun-08 Version 2.11.0. Improvements in long-term stability of libraries and components. Updated for CMake 2.6.0 and Ice 3.3.0. See Release Notes for details.
• 24-Apr-08 Version 2.10.0. Integration with GearBox. See Release Notes for details.
• 07-Feb-08 Version 2.9.0 released. Major cleanup of component build system. A basic component can now be built with 2 files instead of 7. Major cleanup of CMake macros used in setting up component compilation. Internal cleanup and many bug fixes. See Release Notes for details.
• 07-Dec-07 Version 2.8.0 released. More hardware drivers were moved to Hydro. New tutorials on writing components. Bug fixes related to Orca/Hydro split. See Release Notes for details.
• 21-Nov-07 Gave an invited talk about Orca at the Forum on Robot Unified Software Platform (part of Robot Week in Pohang, South Korea)
• Older News