Player Project

The Player Project (formerly Player/Stage Project) creates free and open-source software for research into robotics and sensor systems.[1] Its components include the Player network server and the Stage platform robotics simulators. Although accurate statistics are hard to obtain, Player is one of the most popular open-source robot interfaces in research and post-secondary education.[2] Most of the major intelligent robotics journals and conferences regularly publish papers featuring real and simulated robot experiments using Player and Stage.

Player Project
Developer(s)Brian Gerkey, Richard Vaughan, Andrew Howard, Nathan Koenig
Initial release2000 (2000)
Stable release
3.0.2 / June 28, 2010 (2010-06-28)
Operating systemLinux, Solaris, BSD, macOS
TypeRobotics suite
LicenseGNU General Public License
Websiteplayerstage.sourceforge.net

Overview

The Player Project is an umbrella under which two robotics-related software projects are currently developed. These include the Player networked robotics server, and the Stage 2D robot simulation environment. The project was founded in 2000 by Brian Gerkey, Richard Vaughan and Andrew Howard at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles, and is widely used in robotics research and education.[3] It releases its software under the GNU General Public License with documentation under the GNU Free Documentation License.

The Player is set of application programming interfaces (APIs, e.g., position2d, bumper, ir, speech, power) that can be implemented by a robot chassis (Roomba, Khephera etc.), possibly over serial line or network, or by Stage (2D simulator) or Gazebo (3D simulator).

Player

The Player software runs on Microsoft Windows, and Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) compatible operating systems, including Linux, macOS, Solaris, and Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) variants. Player can be described as a 'robot abstraction layer,' in that all devices are abstracted into a set of pre-defined interfaces.

Player supports a wide variety of hardware (sensor devices and robot platforms alike).[4] It also contains client library support for several programming languages including C, C++, Python and Ruby. Third-party client libraries are available in other languages including Java and Tcl. Added features include a minimal and flexible design, support for interfacing with multiple devices concurrently, and on-the-fly server configuration.

Stage

The Stage simulator is a 2D multiple-robot simulation environment built on Fast Light Toolkit (FLTK). Stage provides a basic simulation environment that can be scaled to model one to hundreds of robots at a time. Stage can be used alone to simulate robot behaviors via user-defined control programs. Stage can also interface with Player, allowing users of Player to access simulated sensors and devices through the Player interfaces.

Gazebo
Main article: Gazebo simulator

The Gazebo 3D robot simulator was a component in the Player Project from 2004 through 2011. Gazebo integrated the Open Dynamics Engine (ODE) physics engine, OpenGL rendering, and support code for sensor simulation and actuator control. In 2011, Gazebo became an independent project support by Willow Garage.[5]

Supported robots
  • Acroname's Garcia
  • Botrics's Obot d100
  • CoroWare Inc. Corobot and Explorer
  • Evolution Robotics' ER1 and ERSDK robots
  • iRobot's Roomba vacuuming robot
  • K-Team's Robotics Extension Board (REB) attached to Kameleon 376BC
  • K-Team's Khephera
  • MobileRobots' (formerly ActivMedia) PSOS/P2OS/AROS-based robots
  • Nomadics' NOMAD200 (and possibly related) mobile robots
  • RWI/iRobot's RFLEX-based robots (e.g., B21r, ATRV Jr)
  • Segway's Robotic Mobility Platform (RMP)
  • UPenn GRASP's Clodbuster
  • Videre Design's ERRATIC mobile robot platform
  • White Box Robotics' 914 PC-BOT

See also

References
  1. Gerkey, B.; Vaughan, R.; Howard, A. (2003). The Player/Stage Project: Tools for Multi-Robot and Distributed Sensor Systems. Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Robotics. pp. 317–323.
  2. Collet, T. H. J.; MacDonald, B. A.; Gerkey, B. (2005). "Player 2.0: Toward a practical robot programming framework". Proceedings of the Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation (ACRA).
  3. PlayerUsers - Player
  4. Player Manual
  5. Archived 2018-01-16 at the Wayback Machine - Gazebo Simulator
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