DROS FAQ

Maintained by: David Austin and Gary Overett

1.0 About this faq
Since DROS came out so many years ago people have been asking questions about it. OK, so perhaps thats really not true, but I (Gary) have and so I've taken it apon myself to document any of these which may be of any use to anyone anywhere. So perhaps this should really be called an "aq" but that sounds really lame. We'd really like DROS to be used by as many people as possible so that we can get the snowball rolling, so don't hesitate to ask questions. Most of the questions here have been asked by me and answered by David in emails, which I then copy onto this page.

Should enough questions arise that I can no longer reasonably place them in the same list, I might even start grouping them. But for now they appear in the list below in no particular order.

2.0 FAQ index

  1. Is DROS being worked on regularly?
  2. Who else is using DROS at the moment?
  3. Was DROS started from nothing?
  4. What sort of code should be reuseable in DROS? ...
  5. What scope of Robot are we talking about?
  6. How much is DROS like an OS?
  7. What do I need to use DROS?

3.0 FAQ

  1. Is DROS being worked on regularly?

    I'm coding it all the time (right now in fact!)

  2. Who else is using DROS at the moment?

    At the moment, just people here at the ANU.

  3. Was DROS started from nothing?

    Sort of. It grew out of RSS which I started from scratch while in Stockholm.

  4. What sort of code should be reuseable in DROS? ( for example. is it the case that a program to move a robot in a square will then move different robots in squares (if they have DROS) or is it more just the communications parts that are moveable between robots)

    I am trying to make the code as reusable as possible. Obviously, I'm trying for the former, but it takes much more effort to achieve.

  5. What scope of Robot are we talking about? Robots on wheels, any robot tha moves basically in 2D (the floor), robots on wheels with arms, robot arms, eyes etc)?

    In the long term, any sort of robot. For the time being, I'm focussing on mobile robots, since that's what I'm doing research with. At some stage, I want to put a manipulator arm on our mobile robot here...

  6. How much is DROS like an OS?

    Ah! Now we're getting philosopical. I think that it's like an OS in the sense that it provides (or should provide) basic building blocks, abstracted access to the hardware and so on. More like some open-slather operating system (e.g. DOS) at the moment. Later on, I can see scope for integrating scheduling into the GCEventLoop class so that it becomes more like a real-time operating system in the computer science sense.

  7. What do I need to use DROS?

    For simulation, you need a unix like computer (only tested on Linux right now) with C++ compiler and perl. Perl is used for the GUI parts of the system. Without perl, it's boring to look at. For a real robot, you need a mobile robot. To make it most interesting, the robot needs to be able to work out where it is. At the moment, I'm using a SICK laser scanner for this which is very good but also pricey at AUD $8000 or so. Other options would be to use a video camera connected to a video capture card on the computer. This would probably require that coloured "markers" be put up to work robustly. Beyond that, it depends a lot on the tasks that you want the robot to attempt.

Copyright 2002 David Austin and Gary Overett