Jazz grows an arm

We had the pleasure to meet Kinova at Innorobo. This has been the opportunity to imagine putting a Jaco robotic arm on Jazz. Maybe for Jazz v3.

Jazz now supports ROS

Gostai Technologies provides a ROS API for the Jazz robot through the Urbi/ROS bridge (available in Urbi 2.7 here).
This interface provides access to all sensors and effectors and allows the use of all ROS stacks (more than 2000 modules) with the robot.

Visit the Jazz-ROS official page here.



An example of application was already published in a previous post.

Uobject profiling

If you want profile your uobjects in an Urbi engine, try this piece of code:

Global.removeSlot("displayStats");
function Global.displayStats(d)
{
  enableStats(true);
  clearStats();
  sleep(d);
  var s = getStats();
  s = s.asList.sort(function(a, b) {
    a[1][0]*a[1][3] > b[1][0]*b[1][3]
  });
  for|(var i in s)
  {
    var comps = i[0].asString.split(".");
    if (hasSlot(comps[0]))
      comps[0] = getSlot(comps[0]).asString;
    if (comps.size < 2)
      comps.insertBack("")
    else
    {
      var c2 = comps[1].split(" --> ");
      if (c2.size == 2)
      {
        if (hasSlot(c2[1]))
          c2[1] = getSlot(c2[1].asString);
        comps[1] = c2[0] + " --> " + c2[1];
      }
    };
    var percent=(i[1][0]*i[1][3]/d)/10000;
    var hz=i[1][3]/d;
    echo(" %s %% %s Hz  %s.%s  %s" %
      [percent, hz, comps[0], comps[1],  i[1]])
  };
};

// And now you can just use it with
displayStats(10s);
// to get statistics during 10s

You can find the source file here: profile.u.

Urbiscript tips: do not use return if it is not necessary.

return does not work the same way that C/C++. In urbiscript return stops the wrapping tag that associated with the current function. One of the consequence is that all at and detach started within the function are terminated when return is used.

version;
// [00004127] "2.7.5"
function f(){detach({every(1s) echo("tic")});sleep(5s);return 0}|;
function g(){detach({every(1s) echo("tac")});sleep(5s);0}|;
f,g;
// [00032224] *** tic
// [00032224] *** tac
// [00033226] *** tac
// [00033226] *** tic
// [00034226] *** tac
// [00034226] *** tic
// [00035226] *** tac
// [00035226] *** tic
// [00036226] *** tac
// [00036226] *** tic
// [00037226] *** tac
// [00037226] *** tic
// [00037226] 0
// [00038226] *** tac
// [00039226] *** tac
// [00040226] *** tac
// [00041226] *** tac
// [00042226] *** tac
// [00043226] *** tac
// [00044226] *** tac

An other consequence is the decrease in speed as shown in the example:

version;
// [01064127] "2.7.5"

function f() { return 0; }|;
function g() { 0 }|;

{ var t=time| for|(90000) { f() }| echo(time-t)};
// [02021134] *** 7.96362
{ var t=time| for|(90000) { g() }| echo(time-t)};
// [02049079] *** 0.109375

Hector slam + Jazz + ROS

We put Hector slam on the Jazz through the middleware ROS and the "ROS bridge" for Urbi.

New Urbi release (2.7.5)

This release is another maintenance release of the 2.7 family. Please see the release notes for a complete description of changes. In addition to several fixes (in particular in source tarballs and Windows packages), some of the noteworthy changes include:

For sake of performances, the Boolean operators '&&' and '||' can no longer be overridden.
Debian and RedHat packages, thanks to Adam Oleksy and Alexandre Morgand.
Many improvements in the documentation.
Compatibility with Clang++2.1, GCC 4.6, Boost 1.48.

http://www.gostai.com/downloads/urbi-sdk/2.x/

You can get the latest Urbi release anytime in the Downloads section of this blog.

New Gostai Studio 2.7

A new version of Gostai Studio has been released!

This new version improves the Studio in two main directions:

• Graphical improvements: the transitions curves can be manually changed and the transition now have a title instead of a truncated version of their code. With these improvements, the complex graphs are way more readable.
• Libraries improvements: the libraries had been introduced in Gostai Studio 2.3, but since then, only the libraries shipped with the application could be used. Now, all necessary tools to create and modify your own libraries are included.

You can download a trial version of Gostai Studio here : http://www.gostai.com/gs