[ros-users] ROS on NXT

[Daniel Stonier]

On 23 December 2010 12:41, Tully Foote <tfoote at willowgarage.com> wrote:

> Hi Jeroen,
>
> it definitely would be a much better solution to have ROS running natively
> on the brick.  I don't know if it has a full enough featured build
> environment to run there.  However there is a project for cross compiling
> ROS onto embedded platforms hopefully some of their tools would be helpful
> if you wanted to try.  See http://www.ros.org/wiki/eros
>
> Tully
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 2:44 AM, Jeroen Willems <jjpa.willems at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I was wondering if there are any plans (cross-compiler?) such that ROS can
>> run on the NXT bricks ?
>>
>> Currently RCX bricks are used for a course Embedded Motion Control using
>> brickOS.
>> We would like to switch to the NXT bricks. Furthermore we want to set up
>> the course such that students can get familiar with ROS.
>>
>> It would be great if the software can run on the brick itself so that we
>> do not need an USB-cable. Bluetooth is not an option because of the high
>> latency.
>>
>> Thanks Jeroen
>>
>>
I'm not at all familiar with the lego mindstorms stuff, so fill me in if you
need to. There are two parts to what I want to say here.

1) If there's a gcc/g++ toolchain for the NXT bricks, then ros/eros can
allow easy cross-compiling, management and deployment of your software (i.e.
non ros programs and libraries) for the bricks. This in itself can be
advantageous because alot of the awkwardness with cross-compiling and
software management is hidden and lets you get on with teaching/working.

2) Cross-compiling ros itself and using ros communications and dependant
stacks. That I suspect will probably be hard. Ros has some pretty steep
dependencies in boost and log4cx. I had a look at the brickOS - it's using
an ancient gcc (v2.95), which will probably mean alot of problems. I'm not
sure about the new next bricks and whatever os they have running needs to
have reasonably standard posix compliance to get those deps to build (even a
minimal boost).

Can you quickly provide any details on the c libraries it uses, gcc version?
How much horsepower do the bricks usually have compared with a smart phone?

Also, should consider the purpose of your course too. Does ros fit? Are you
wanting to monitor across a connection back to a pc? (do you have ethernet
back to a pc?). Are you scaling to the point where you feel like you want to
modularise?

Regards,
Daniel


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>
>
> --
> Tully Foote
> Systems Engineer
> Willow Garage, Inc.
> tfoote at willowgarage.com
> (650) 475-2827
>
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