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NASA Frees Their Robotics Software
kremvax writes "It's a field day for robotics hackers everywhere, as NASA releases the first installment of their CLARAty reusable robotic software framework to the public. According to the JPL press release, these modules contain everything from math infrastructure to device drivers for common motors and cameras, and computer vision, image, and 3D processing."
BBC is an abbreviation not an acronym (acronyms must be pronounceable. Okay, you could say "bebekuh" but you sound ridiculous). Actually, the OP is Just Wrong. Acronyms tend to start out uppercased, then maybe get an initial capital only, then go to lower case as they become terms in their own right. Consider FORmula TRANslator -> FORTRAN -> Fortran -> fortran . LISt Processing -> LISP -> Lisp -> lisp. BInary digiT -> BIT -> bit. Graphics Interchange Format -> GIF -> gif.
As Nasa is the proper name of an organisation, and English capitalises proper names and a few other nouns (less so than German, though...), I expect the process to halt at "Nasa".
FTA:"CLARAty development was primarily funded by the Mars Technology Program and it serves as the integration environment for the program's rover technology developments."
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
If you read the license, you'll notice that you are not allowed to use the code for commercial purposes without paying a royalty and getting a different license (this one doesn't allow commercial use). Because of this, it does not qualify as Open Source (OSI definition) or Free (FSF definition) unless you're using another definition for one of these common licensing terms. For once we don't need to debate the merits of one or the other, because this license is neither.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
"The term is most commonly applied to the source code of software that is made available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent intellectual property restrictions."
This has relaxed IP restriction. It can be used by any one for non commercial use.
OS and FS are often combined on slashdot, mostly because linux is both.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's the British way of doing acronyms that are said as a word rather than spelled out.
What's this? Another weblog? On transit?
But there does exist another large robotics library that is completely free called Player. The project even has two complete simulators, Stage (for 2D simulation of many robots) and Gazebo (for 3D simulation of a smaller number of robots). Great project for any aspiring roboticists out there.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
Or it might just have been my oversight that clipped it out, but I could swear the story link itself was set to MrFuture.com. Either way I feel terrible.
Everyone send a nice note to MrFuture.com thanking him for originally digging this up.
Kremvax
--- Little Atomo - The Amazing Thinking Robot from Atomocom! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIP9KisHi4k
My master thesis finished this month is about component systems for mobile robotics and other domains, it's a called Experimental Robotics Framework (ERF), and is freely available at http://miarn.sf.net/. ERF makes it easy to setup experiments in robotics domains and even other domains by legoing (putting together) simple components to achieve lots of different experiments. It uses robotics sensors (+30) from Player/Stage/Gazebo and displays the experiments in 3d using opengl + fltk. Also it makes it trivial to interface with components via GUI (clicking in the world) or via text or speech ("robot go to"). The choice of foundation libraries makes it portable to any platform and the license is LGPL. Check-out the quality of the videos of ERF and those of Clarity... pretty much side by side no ?
As for the Clarity, it seems immature, i didn't even get it to install without modifying the provided configuration. Also it has that feeling of proprietary all over it. Just navigating the site is annoying with all those password pop-ups appearing. In ERF installation is with standard GNU autotools and rpms of more component kits are made available... total install commands needed: rpm.