[ros-users] Current state of SMACH in ROS

[Herman Bruyninckx]

On Thu, 16 Feb 2012, Edwards, Shaun M. wrote:

> Herman,
>
> I definitely agree.  I had Orocos in mind for the hard realtime aspects.
> Could you elaborate more on the "Coordination via FSM" or provide a web
> link?

This might be a good introduction.

Coordination is _the_ major missing feature in ROS. (SMACH is a small step
in this direction.) My contacts with industrial/professional users of
Orocos is that most of their added value lies in how good they are in doing
"pure Coordination" (together with find the "best" architecture for a
particular application, but both things are highly coupled).

Herman

>
> Shaun Edwards
> Senior Research Engineer
> Manufacturing System Department
>
>
> http://robotics.swri.org
> http://rosindustrial.swri.org/
> http://ros.swri.org
> Southwest Research Institute
> 210-522-3277
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ros-users-bounces at code.ros.org [mailto:ros-users-bounces at code.ros.org] On Behalf Of Herman Bruyninckx
> Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2012 2:13 PM
> To: User discussions
> Subject: Re: [ros-users] Current state of SMACH in ROS
>
> On Thu, 16 Feb 2012, Edwards, Shaun M. wrote:
>
>> All,
>>
>> We are in the initial steps of setting up a consortium to support the
>> development of ROS-Industrial (http://code.google.com/p/swri-ros-pkg/ ).
>> We are nowhere near standing up the consortium, but assuming we are
>> successful, SMACH is near the top of our list of ROS functionality that
>> needs to be improved.  We will certainly work with the ROS community at
>> large to further develop this tool, but the main goal of the consortium
>> is to build on existing tools in a way that servers the needs of
>> industrial users.
>
> The industrial focus has been the major driver in the Orocos project, since
> more than ten years now. Orocos has some mature features that industry
> needs: hard realtime and efficient Coordination via FSM are two of the
> features on top of the list.
>
> ROS and Orocos can be used in nice synergy, with each focusing on its
> strenghts. So, before putting again lots of efforts in reinventing good
> wheels in one single framewrok, please take a good look at how one should
> build multiple-framework applications, tools and systems.
>
>> Shaun Edwards
>> Senior Research Engineer
>> Manufacturing System Department
>
> Herman
>
>> http://robotics.swri.org
>> http://rosindustrial.swri.org/
>> http://ros.swri.org
>> Southwest Research Institute
>> 210-522-3277
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: ros-users-bounces at code.ros.org [mailto:ros-users-bounces at code.ros.org] On Behalf Of Wim Meeussen
>> Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2012 12:04 PM
>> To: User discussions
>> Subject: Re: [ros-users] Current state of SMACH in ROS
>>
>>> So the official maintainer of SMACH is still Wim Meeussen, I handed it off
>>> to him after I left Willow in late 2010, but I still jump in occasionally to
>>> answer questions and fix bugs. SMACH is not actively developed (no new
>>> features are planned at this time), but it should still be maintained. My
>>> involvement has lapsed a bit over the past year, but I intend to get more
>>> actively involved.
>>
>> I wanted to add to this that while SMACH is not actively developed at
>> this time, we do support it and release it into every ROS
>> distribution, and it still gets used heavily in both existing and new
>> projects.
>>
>> Wim
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>

-- 
--
   KU Leuven, Mechanical Eng., Mechatronics & Robotics Research Group
     <http://people.mech.kuleuven.be/~bruyninc> Tel: +32 16 328056
   EURON Coordinator (European Robotics Research Network) <http://www.euron.org>
   Open Realtime Control Services <http://www.orocos.org>
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