Robotsystem of the Robot Group Leipzig: Documentation of lpzrobots

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# Documentation of lpzrobots

### 0.3

Organization:
  University Leipzig
  Institute for Computer Science
  Dept. Intelligent Systems
  Prof. Dr. Ralf Der
  Research Group Neuroinformatics und Robotic

People:
  Ralf Der, Georg Martius, Frank Hesse, Rene Liebscher, Marcel Kretschmann, Dominic Schneider, Claus Stadler, Frank Güttler

## General

This is a collection of algorithms, simulations, and tools developed by the robot group of the University Leipzig
(http://robot.informatik.uni-leipzig.de). It consists of the following directories (click for details):

- selforg : controllers together with a small framework for using them, developed in the robotic group of Leipzig university yielding at self-organized behaviour for various kinds of machines.
- ode_robots : stuff needed for our ODE-simulations (Open Dynamics Engine, see http://www.ode.org) such as robots, obstacles, utils, our patches and stuff for visualization with OSG (OpenSceneGraph, see http://www.openscenegraph.org)
- guilogger : application that coordinates multiple gnuplot windows and switches channels on or of, data is sent per pipe from your program
- neuronviz : application that displays neural networks
- webots : directory with some webots simulations
- opende : directory with a snapshot of the open dynamics engine (some developer version after 0.6) (please follow the link for installion hints)

## Requirements

You need the following software and libraries installed (Tested on Linux x86 machines)

- ODE see http://www.ode.org which is now in the opende directory (please follow the instrutions printed by the Makefile in lpzrobots)
- OpenSceneGraph http://www.openscenegraph.org (version >= 0.9.8) (Debian includes it in Etch (Testing) and higher)
- (optional) Qt library from http://www.trolltech.com for guilogger (version > 3.0)
- (optional) Java JDK for neuronviz (version >= J2SE 1.5.0)

## Installation & Startup

- Download source tar ball from http://robot.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/software .
- Unpack file.
- Change into `lpzrobots` directory
- Call `make` . It will to the following:
  - it compiles neuronviz (not strictly necessary, only for displaying neuronal network online)
  - it compiles guilogger (not strictly necessary, only for displaying parameters online)
  - Please note, that the make call will not fail if either of them failed to make, because they are optional. Type `make guilogger` and `make neuronviz` to compile them seperately.
  - it creates dependency files and creates links to header files, that they can be found.
  - it prints some information how to install the ODE residing in the opende directory.
- Call `make install` to install the guilogger binary and the neuronviz stuff to your `~/bin` and `~/lib` folder of your home directory. (Might be necessary to create the folders by hand.)
- To start a simulation go into that simulation directory, call `make` and `./start`. For example when you want to start the template_onerobot simulation type `cd ode_robots/simulations/template_onerobot`, then call `make` and after successful compilation type `start` to start the simulation (`make opt` will produce and `start_opt`, which is compiled with optimisation. (might need a make clean before))
- The following command line options are available (type start -h for a full list of options):

      Usage: ./start [-g [interval]] [-f [interval]] [-r seed] [-x WxH] [-pause] [-noshadow] [-drawboundings] [-simtime [min]]
              -g [interval]   use guilogger (default interval 1)
              -f [interval]   write logging file (default interval 5)
              -n [interval]   use neuronviz (default interval 10)
              -r seed         random number seed
              -x WxH          window size of width(W) x height(H) is used (640x480 default)
              -pause          start in pause mode
              -noshadow       disables shadows and shaders
              -drawboundings  enables the drawing of the bounding shapes of the meshes
              -simtime [min]  intended simulation time in minutes

- Have a look at the console after starting the program, there you will find some further information for the usage of the program.
- For starting your own simulation see paragraph "How to Start Your Own Simulation" in ode_robots.
- For a well documented examples of a main.cpp of a simulation and a robot .cpp file click the tab "Examples" at the top of this page.

## Documentation

- This manual can be found at http://robot.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/software
- More informations on the used self-organization algorithm is available at http://robot.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/research
- The ODE tutorial of Marcel Kretschmann can be found at http://robot.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/students
  (Tar ball with pdf and example code also there available.)
- The original ODE documentation can be found at http://www.ode.org/ode-docs.html
- The OSG documentation can be found at http://www.openscenegraph.org/osgwiki/pmwiki.php/Documentation/Documentation