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Simulator |
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Project Management Installing and Running RP1 |
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| The Downloads Page |
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The text below describes the software available for downloading |
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We are in the process of re-thinking this page. Please bear with us
while we investigate the best way to use it in the future.
The Rossum Project is hosted by SourceForge,
a service dedicated to supporting
free, open-source software initiatives. SourceForge's file-release and
software download
system is so superior to anything we could accomplish, that we've decided not to try.
Instead, we are including a link to the page they provide for us.
To access our download system, click Here
It's Not About Java
Some of our visitors have commented on their impression that the Rossum Project is either
a "Java software project" or "a robot simulator project." While it is true that much of what
we have right now is written in Java, and that the RP1 simulator is one of our bigger projects,
that's not what we're about.
It Is About Robotics
We hope that the software you see at this site is just a beginning. Our intention is to provide
open-source software for robotics. We are actively seeking other tools... especially software that
can run on actual robotic platforms. We are not coupled to any particular language. A lot of the stuff
we have in the works is being done in C and Assembler. And we hope to see contributions written
for a variety of different environments and applications.
File Release System and Project Facilities
Our file-release system is at
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2492.
Follow that link to download all the latest version of our projects.
Descriptions for some of these projects is given below.
Rossum's Project Management Page
is an important source of project news
and a variety of user-functions including User Forums, Bug Reports,
Support Requests, etc. Need help? Got something
to say? Stop by for a visit.
To receive announcements of future developments, join our
mailing list by sending an email to G.W. Lucas
The RP1 robot simulator is written in Java. To run it you will need to have
either the Java Development Kit (JDK) or Java Runtime Environment (JRE)
installed on your system. These can be downloaded free-of-charge from
numerous sites on the web. Two obvious choices are
IBM which supports several
operating systems (including a good JDK for Linux) and
Sun Microsystems
the creators of the Java language.
You will need an extraction utility to read the archived code and binaries
from our zip files.
Many systems have one already. If yours doesn't, get one from
Info-Zip for almost
any operating system.
A windows-based utility if available from Winzip,
both Mac and PC users can use Stuffit.
And practically any Java toolkit will come with a Java jar utility that can read
both .jar and .zip files.
Download the Latest Revision
Downloading is a little bit more complicated than we wish it were, but shouldn't
be too difficult. Just click the link to go to our
File Release Page and look for the heading "rossum."
The current version is Rev 0.60 and everything else should be self-explanatory.
The Localization package includes the code for Vassilis Varveropolous'
grid-based navigation and mapping package. This outstanding implementation
runs on a PC with an RF link to a highly modified Rug Warrior robot. The package
is a companion piece to Vassilis' paper (see
Localization),
which is also excellent.
We are grateful for this major contribution to The Rossum Project collection.
Written in Java (should be easy to follow if you know C).
Michael Gauland wrote this interactive tool to allow you to plot the path
of a robot based on the differential-steering system (wheel-chair system)
of wheel actuators. Later, an Austrailian student named Jing YE upgraded the
math for even better realism. If you are designing a mobile robot transport system
this Applet can be a valuable tool. And it's a lot of fun too...
MotionApplet is, as it's name suggests, a Java Applet. If your web browser
is configured with the right plug-in's, you may run it from
The MotionApplet Page.
If not, you may download it and run it using the appletviewer utility that comes with Java.
A few years back, the winner of the Connecticut Robotics Society's dead-reckoning contest
was a robot named Peeves that implemented a PID-based controller on a Lego Mindstorms system.
What's a PID-based controller? Gary thought you should know, so he wrote an article
in the August 2001 issue of The Seattle Robotics Society's on-line magazine,
The Encoder
The article gives away all of the tricks that allowed Peeves to dead-reckon
it's way to victory.
The source code for the robot's controller is available at our site.
Written in NQC for Mindstorms (a simplified variant of C, quite easy to follow).
Questions? Comments? Write to gwlucas@users.sourceforge.net.