From: Paul O. <pj...@gm...> - 2009-07-24 18:29:43
|
For a college project we are working on using multiple robots to move in formation. My question is: should we run a player server on each individual robot, using a laptop as a client to run the formations program? Or would it be possible to have a desktop be the server and the individual robots the clients? Using 1 server per robot seems the most common, but we would like the ability to visualize every robot at once on one computer. We plan on using Gumstix. Any other recommendations on cheap hardware to use with player are appreciated. It seems like this simple question isn't really answered anywhere - and I am a newb so be gentle. |
From: Toby C. <tob...@gm...> - 2009-07-24 18:45:24
|
Player is pretty flexible in this respect. In the past when I have worked with a small fleet of pioneers we had a ITX PC on each robot running a player server and then clients to control them on desktop(s), You can have multiple clients connected to each server, so if you want one desktop for visualising the lot, that doesn't stop you having other clients to control them. Really what it comes down to is: The hardware you have available, how you are going to communicate with the robots, and the latency you need. If you are running a tight control loop, you probably dont want that running over consumer wifi, so if in that case you would be wise to run at least some of the control locally. On the other hand if you are using a platform that has minimal resources it might be worth using very simple control with custom code/communication, and then create a plugin that talks this protocol from a desktop (which could talk to all your robots if you want). So unfortunately not the simple answer you probably wanted, mainly because probably almost every configuration you can think of has been used by someone at some point with Player, and so it has grown to support all of the options. Toby 2009/7/24 Paul Ozog <pj...@gm...> > For a college project we are working on using multiple robots to move in > formation. > > My question is: should we run a player server on each individual robot, > using a laptop as a client to run the formations program? Or would it be > possible to have a desktop be the server and the individual robots the > clients? Using 1 server per robot seems the most common, but we would like > the ability to visualize every robot at once on one computer. We plan on > using Gumstix. Any other recommendations on cheap hardware to use with > player are appreciated. > > It seems like this simple question isn't really answered anywhere - and I > am a newb so be gentle. > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Playerstage-users mailing list > Pla...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/playerstage-users > > -- This email is intended for the addressee only and may contain privileged and/or confidential information |
From: Richard V. <rtv...@gm...> - 2009-07-24 19:01:34
|
On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 11:29 AM, Paul Ozog<pj...@gm...> wrote: > For a college project we are working on using multiple robots to move in > formation. > > My question is: should we run a player server on each individual robot, > using a laptop as a client to run the formations program? Or would it be > possible to have a desktop be the server and the individual robots the > clients? Using 1 server per robot seems the most common, but we would like > the ability to visualize every robot at once on one computer. We plan on > using Gumstix. Any other recommendations on cheap hardware to use with > player are appreciated. You'll need to run the Player server on each robot anyway, to talk to the hardware and expose it to the network. So that's your starting point. The easiest thing to do, assuming you have a fast and robust wireless setup, is to have a single client program running on your desktop that connects to each of the servers. Player has a multiclient example to show how to do this (C++ I think). If you wish, you can also have a server on the desktop which aggregates all the individual robot servers into one place. Your desktop-based client can talk to that server, but that's simply adding one more hop to the situation above, and is probably not worthwhile. if your wireless isn't sufficiently reliable to avoid the robots crashing once in a while (unfortunately common), you'll need to run a client on each robot and have them talk to each other. Richard/ > It seems like this simple question isn't really answered anywhere - and I am > a newb so be gentle. > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Playerstage-users mailing list > Pla...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/playerstage-users > > -- Richard Vaughan Autonomy Lab / Computing Science / Simon Fraser University |