[ros-users] Announcing new ROS repositories: cn-roscs-ros-pkg, cn-alica-ros-pkg, and cn-util-ros-pkg

[Hendrik Skubch]

Dear ROS community,

we are happy to announce three new ROS repositories:

- cn-roscs-ros-pkg (http://code.google.com/p/cn-roscs-ros-pkg/)

This stack contains a single package: roscs, which provides C# wrappers 
for ROS. It does not support the complete ROS functionality, but the 
parts we deemed most important, namely publish / subscribe, service 
calls, limited support for parameters and some minor functionality. We 
are using this under Linux with mono, Windows is not tested and will 
probably not work.

- cn-util-ros-pkg (http://code.google.com/p/cn-util-ros-pkg/)

This stack contains some useful utility libraries, namely:
- cstf, which wraps some tf methods in C#,
- Castor, a utility library for reading and writing configuration files 
from C++ and C#,
- udp_proxy_generator - Generates multicast proxies for ros topics. It 
is a very simple approach to a multi master environment, no namespace or 
topic remappings are done, messages are simply relayed. Given a 
configuration file, which specifies topics and message types, C++ code 
for a proxy is generated and compiled.

- cn-alica-ros-pkg (http://code.google.com/p/cn-alica-ros-pkg/)

This stack holds ALICA, a framework to coordinate and control multiple 
robots. It consists of three packages:
	- Planmodeller - an Eclipse-based IDE to model
	  multi-robot behaviour.
	- AlicaEngine - an execution layer for the designed programs.
	- AlicaClient - a simple monitoring GUI.
At its core, ALICA, similar to SMACH, uses hierarchies of state-automata 
to define behaviour. In contrast to SMACH, it is geared at teams of 
robots, and features task and role allocation algorithms and coordinated 
constraint solving and optimisation facilities.

This is part of an ongoing effort to make the source code of the RoboCup 
Mid-Size Team Carpe Noctem publicly available. All this software is used 
on our MSL robots. Documentation will be added to the wiki once indexed.
This video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhIrhU19PG4 shows the 
software in action during the Dutch Open 2012 tournament.

Many thanks,
	Hendrik Skubch
	Distributed Systems Group
	University of Kassel
	Carpe Noctem