RobotFlow 0.1.0 Released for Developers

RobotFlow is a mobile robotics tookit based on the Overflow project (http://freespeech.sourceforge.net/overflow.html). Overflow is a data-flow oriented architecture, similar to Simulink (Matlab) or Labview that is free (LGPL) and versatile. The visual programming interface provided in the Overflow project will help people to better visualize & understand what is really happening in the robot's control loops, sensors, actuators, by using graphical probes and debugging in real-time.

The work on RobotFlow has begun in september 2001 as an University of Sherbrooke project in the Mobile Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory (http://www.gel.usherb.ca/laborius). The work on the project still continues and will become available to everybody through SourceForge as a LGPL project. We hope with this toolkit to create a standard & open platform that all people from hobbyists to researchers could use and improve over time. It primarily supports Linux/Unix using the GNOME GUI.

The Overflow & the Robotflow toolkit are written in C++ and provide fully customizable control and processing blocks :

• Drivers & interfaces for Pioneer2 Robots
• Vision processing algorithms (color training & tracking, etc.)
• Player / Stage simulator drivers for Overflow/RobotFlow
• Signal processing algorithms (audio + video)
• Basic Behaviors
• Fuzzy Logic control
• Artificial Neural Networks
• Embedded super blocks (subnets, iterators)
• Basic networking (TCP/IP, broadcast)
• Device control (Sony EVI-D30, SICK lasers, etc.)

Networks created with the visual interface called "vflow" can also be run as scripts (with no graphical interface), enabling robots with lower resources to fully take advantage of Overflow / RobotFlow. Overflow provides an easy way to create your own data types/structures and blocks as toolkits.

Open Architecture

Overflow / Robotflow provides the full source code (LGPL license) that you can modify and play with. Users can then improve the processing engine and the toolkits for the benefit of all the users. You can also create your own "private" toolkits, and continue to participate to the development of the "core" library.