robot-viewer

A vizualization tool for robots using OpenGL and Python.

Main features:

• 3d vizualization of multiple robots and objects.
• simulation view of on-robot cameras.
• screen/screen capture builtin.
• server-client design.

Installation

Binary package

Ubuntu:

apt-add-repository ppa:dang-duong/ppa
apt-get update
apt-get install robot-viewer

Fedora:

Create a robotviewer.repo file inside /etc/yum.repo.d with the following lines:

[robotviewer]
name=Repository for robot-viewer.
baseurl=http://homepages.laas.fr/nddang/repos/fedora14
enabled=1

Change the line "fedora14" to the appropriate version of your system. Install robot-viewer by the usual way:

yum install robot-viewer

From source

Linux

Make sure you have the following dependency:

• python 2.6 or 2.7.

• pyopengl, numpy

• SimpleParse 2.1

• omniORB 4.1.4 and omniORBpy (optional)

Install this package as an usual python package:

python setup.py install --prefix $YOUR_PREFIX

Mac OSX

• An easy way to install dependencies for robot-viewer is using Macports:

  port install py26-opengl py26-Numeric py26-omniORBpy

• Make sure you have the correct PATH, PYTHONPATH, etc. in ~/.profile.

• Install simpleparse and robot-viewer the same way as in Linux.

Usage

• Edit $HOME/.robotviewer/config to add your robot. robot-viewer supports vrml and kxml formats for robot representation.
• Start the server: robotviewer -s SERVER_TYPE

where SERVER_TYPE is either "CORBA" or "XML-RPC". If no option is given, CORBA will be used.

• In a python prompt, start the client: import robotviewer clt = robotviewer.client(server=SERVER_TYPE)

  where SERVER_TYPE corresponds to the kind of server you started in previous step. (i.e. "CORBA" or "XML-RPC")

The following functions are available for the client:

 * createElement(type, name, description)
 * destroyElement(element_name)
 * enableElement(element_name)
 * disableElement(element_name)
 * updateElementConfig(element_name, config)
 * getElementConfig(element_name)
 * listElement()