Posted by Tim
Filed under: Fedora
Fawkes in Google Summer of Code 2011 with Fedora
Fawkes participates in the Google Summer of Code 2011 under the umbrella of the Fedora Project.
The Fedora Robotics SIG has completed the Fedora Robotics Suite, a set of robotics related software packages that are readily available in Fedora Linux. Fawkes is one prominent member of this package set. The original idea also envisioned creating an educational application, where a user would learn step by step to control a robot, then instruct, and finally program it. The project could not be completed due to a developer shortage.
The project has now been proposed as one possible candidate for the Google Summer of Code 2011 with the Fedora Project as mentoring organization. If you are a student with a background in robotics and experience in C++ software development please consider applying for this project. The Fedora Robotics SIG comprises many developers of upstream software projects providing a good way to get in touch with those projects. It will also be a very visible feature of the Fedora Robotics effort providing a good show case for later applications.
To apply please read information on the Fedora GSoC 2011 page and contact Tim Niemueller of the Fedora Robotics SIG.
Posted by Tim
Filed under: University
UniMensa RWTH Datenbank wieder verfügbar
Die wöchentlich aktualisierte RWTH Mensa Datenbank ist nun wieder verfügbar. Vielen Dank an Holger Jeromin für das Beisteuern eines Scripts zum Auslesen der neuen Website des Studentenwerks.
Damit stehen die Mensapläne wieder für Palm und per WAP zur Verfügung, und auch andere Dienste wie das Aussenden per Skyper von der Amateurfunkgruppe der RWTH-Aachen sollten damit wieder funktionieren. Sollte es noch Probleme geben, bitte eine kurze Nachricht an mich.
Posted by Tim
Filed under: Geek
Fedora now includes Fawkes
Recently we proposed Fawkes for inclusion into Fedora. The review has completed and the package has been accepted! Fawkes and its development environment can now be installed out of the box, see the download page for instructions.
On a related note Fawkes has been chosen by the Fedora Robotics SIG to play a major role in the Fedora Robotics Spin along with Player and Stage. The main idea of this spin is to have software on a LiveDVD providing a ready-to-use robotic simulation environment, with a demo application to introduce users step by step to the available software. Additionally as much robotics related software as possible, ranging from packages for hardware access (laser scanners, robotic arms) and robotic middleware frameworks, to full-blown simulation environments and libraries relevant for robotic applications like vision processing or task control will be added. The Robotics Spin has been proposed as a Fedora 15 Feature
For this LiveDVD Fawkes will be used in combination with Player and Stage to provide the environment for the demonstration application. In particular, the behavior engine based on Lua will be the tools used to guide the user to complete tasks of increasing complexity within the simulation environment. Among others like Player/Stage and the RoboCup 3D Soccer Server Fawkes will be one of the highlighted robot software packages.
Posted by Tim
Filed under: News
Twitter annoyances
After Twitter disabled basic authentication yesterday, basically all Open Source Twitter clients ceased working (e.g. bug #629192). I tried some clients from the Fedora repositories, but none seems to work. I liked the simplicity of Pino, but now it's just dead wood. Mauku on the N900 is also broken. Not even the personal timeline RSS feed works anymore, although still advertised on the Twitter website.
ars technica has an article which describes the the problem with FOSS clients on page 2 and it doesn't look good so far. It seems finally to be time to switch to identi.ca (me).
Posted by Tim
Filed under: Geek
Releases of Fawkes 0.4 and roslua
Yesterday I have released Fawkes 0.4, the robot software framework we have developed at RWTH Aachen University, with contributions from TU Graz and University of Cape Town. Various obstacles made it one year for the release to materialize, but finally it's here with lots of new stuff, check out the announcement. Many people have helped with this release, good to see. Fedora packages are on their way, now that we support system-wide installation.
Recently I have also been busy working on software for another robot software framework -- ROS. As part of my research stay with Dr. Siddharta Srinivasa from Intel Research Pittsburgh at the Carnegie Mellon University I have developed roslua, a ROS client library for Lua. This is only the first step in porting Fawkes' behavior engine to ROS. You can find the full announcement on the ROS website. So after "the discovery" I still can be kind of productive. More is cooking, stay tuned.
