Intermodalics, K.U.Leuven and Locomotec are organizing a two-part seminar,
appealing to both industry and research institutes, titled:

 1. Real-Time Robotics with state-of-the art open source software:
case studies (45min presentation, open to all)
 2. Exploring the Orocos Toolchain (2 hours hands-on, registration required)

on April 7th, 2011 at the European Robotics Forum, Västerås, Sweden[1,2].
The European Robotics Forum is a gathering of representatives of all
European robotics stakeholders from industry, research, academia and
public and private investors. It primarily aims at facilitating networking
between these groups through numerous plenary sessions and smaller
workshops of common interest.

1. Real-Time Robotics with state-of-the art open source software: case studies

In this presentation, Peter Soetens and Ruben Smits introduce the audience to
a bird's eye view of today's Open Source robotics eco-system. Which are the 
strong and weak points of existing software ? Which work seamlessly together, 
and on which operating systems (Windows, Linux, VxWorks,... ) ? We will prove 
our statements with practical examples from both academic and industrial use 
cases. This presentation is the result of the long standing experience of the 
presenters with a open source technologies in robotics applications and will 
offer the audience leads and insights to further explore this realm.

2. Exploring the Orocos Toolchain

In this hands-on session, the participants are invited to bring their own
laptop with Orocos and ROS (optionally) installed. We will support Linux, Mac
OS-X and Windows users and will provide instructions on how they can prepare
to participate.

We will let the participants experience that the Orocos toolchain:
* gives you the possibility to write expressive, compact, yet
real-time applications (if on a real-time OS) 
* nicely integrates with other popular robotics software
* provides the hooks and extensions to allow application supervision
* makes 'separation of concerns' in software a natural habit for the 
programmer
* allows to easily script an application together and inspect/modify
with it easily while running

We will use the ROS message protocol to interface the YouBot or a Gazebo
simulation of it.

You first need to register for attending the euRobotics Forum. Registration
for the hands-on is mandatory, but free of charge. We will limit the
number of participants to 20.
Please register your participation by sending an email to
info@intermodalics.eu .

More information is available online at
http://www.orocos.org/wiki/orocos/eurobotics2011

[1] EU Robotics Forum: http://www.eurobotics-project.eu/cms/index.php?idcat=40
[2] Programme: http://www.eurobotics-project.eu/cms/index.php?idcat=43