naocommons

Naocommons is a software platform to program the NAO robot. It aims at compelementing Aldebaran's API by providing

• low-latency configurable data streams from the robot and

• flexible means to process these streams and build an application on top of them.

Ultimately, the naocommons framework will allow you to program in the environment and language of your choice and reuse code that can only runs different platforms. For that,

Components (Please note that most of these don't exist yet)

The naoserver is a live interface to your robot. You can communicate with the server, either over the network or as direct a plug-in:

• determine what services are avalaible, from server-mediated access to NAO actuators and sensory streams to high-level services provided by other clients and plug-ins

• communicate directly to a service by using its API

• make your own services available to other clients.

The naoclient runs on NAO and handles requests from naoserver. It streams sensor data to the naoserver to make it available for your programming needs.

The client framework contains libraries and code samples in a variety of languages to help you start programming your NAO control application using clients. This is the most flexible framework for you to write your NAO application:

• you may run a client on the same machine as naoserver or on a different machine, communicating with the server over the network. Communication with the server uses JSON RPC.

• you may write your client program in any language. JSON RPC is a simple protocol with implementations in numerous languages.

• the drawback of the client framework is a higher latency.

The plug-in framework lets your write your control program as a naoserver plug-in.

• you can only run it on the same computer as the naoserver.

• it is most conveniently written in a language with access to C types.

• the advantage is a lower latency.

Dependencies

Aldebaran tools (naoqi, libraries, C++ SDK)

NAO v4

Quickstart

This program is developed on a 32 bit Linux machine for a NAO v4 (Atom), so YMMV with other configurations.

Assuming that you have set up your development environment as advised by Aldebaran in the official NAO documentation, and named your NAO build chain "nao-atom", then you should be able to chechout this project in your qibuild workspace, add it and run

qibuild configure -c nao-atom && qibuild make -c nao-atom && qibuild deploy -c nao-atom [email protected]:naoqi

where 192.168.1.11 is the IP of your NAO.

Now, ssh to your NAO. On NAO, add the following to ~/naoqi/preferences/autoload.ini, under the [user] section:

/home/nao/naoqi/lib/naoqi/libnaoclient.so

restart NAOqi:

nao restart

try it:

start_naoclient

(For now, it just grabs a frame from the active camera to the file ~/startstream.yuv. You can copy it to your computer and use, for instance, pyuv to look at it: 1280x960, YUV 4:2:2, interleaved.)

You can check the log in /var/log/naoqi.log. To have a look at the verbose log, you can stop naoqi

nao stop

and start it with "verbose" output:

naoqi -v

to see if the RTSP server works, put a raw h264 file in your current directort and call

~/naoqi/bin/testOnDemandRTSPServer 

You should be able to connect to your stream from another computer using VLC.

Documentation

For API doc, see the generated documentation when there is one, or the source code comments.

For design docs and future development plans, see the relevant wiki pages.

The Naocommons wiki also contains various resources from and by researchers who use Aldebaran's Nao. Anyone can edit the wiki and contribute. I rearrange the pages when necessary.

Attribution and licensing

Names

NAO and NAOqi are trademarks of Aldebaran Robotics.

The LiveMedia framework is developed by Live Networks, Inc. and distributed under the LGPL.

x264 is a free software library developed by the x264 team distributed under the GPL.

The naocommons wiki contents are the property of their respective creators.

Licensing

The naoclient, naoserver and core naoserver plug-ins and clients are distributed under the General Public License, version 3 (LGPL v3). This lets you to program your own naoserver plug-ins and clients privately without having to redistribute the source. However, if your application that makes use of naocommons is distributed, you must release the entire source code under the GPL. ** Do not ask me to change the license, it is not possible because I make use of x264, another GPL-licensed piece of software.** Although it is dual-licensed, I did not purchase the right to commercially distribute it.