orca-robotics
INTRODUCTION
Overview
Download and Install
Quick Start
Documentation
Publications
REPOSITORY
Interfaces
Components
Libraries
Utilities
Software Map
DEVELOPER
Tutorials
Examples
Dev Guide
Dashboard
Wiki
login/pass: orca/orca
PEOPLE
Contributors
Users
Project
Download
Mailing lists
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 components: 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 this web page matches the latest release. A web page is also generated every 30 min from the latest SVN version.
News
- Current. See what's in the pipeline.
- 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 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)
- 28-Oct-07 Version 2.7.0 released. A chunk of communication-independent code was split off from Orca into a new distribution called Hydro. See the updated installation instructions for how to install Hydro and Orca. At the same time, the entire project code repository has moved to SVN. Many other updates. See Release Notes for details.
- 28-Sep-07 Our position paper was accepted for the Workshop on Evaluation of Middleware and Architectures to be held at IROS'07 in San Diego.
- 18-Sep-07 Version 2.6.0 is released. See Release Notes for details. One important change is a fix for robot2d which would cause the tutorials to malfunction on some machines.
- 13-Aug-07 Version 2.5.0 is released. See Release Notes for details.
- 03-Jun-07 Version 2.4.0 is released. This release requires Ice v3.2, as it is not backwards-compatible with Ice v3.1. This release contains many component updates, and fixes a serious issue to do with re-subscriptions for Ice3.2. See Release Notes for details.
- 12-Apr-07 We wrote an article for ZeroC's Connections newsletter about the use of Ice and Orca by a Darpa Urban Challenge team.
- 11-Apr-07 Orca project admins were invited to participate in an organizational meeting of RoSta -- a European Coordination Action for Robot Standards. We hope to contribute to this project in the future.
- Older News
