2P1-A23 rtcshell : Command-line tools for OpenRTM-aist

Abstract

Component-based software is a major recent design trend in robotics. It brings many benefits to system design, implementation and maintenance. The management of such systems often depends on graphical tools. These tools are powerful and provide a rapid way to layout component networks. However, they also typically require considerable resources to run. This is not ideal in robotics, where low-resource environments are common. We have created a set of command-line tools for use with the OpenRTM-aist component-based robot middleware. The tools follow the UNIX philosophy of simplicity and aggregation. These tools allow whole component-based systems to be created, managed and monitored from a command-line. They are ideal for use in environments where a graphical interface is not available. By combining tools together using shell scripts, more complex functionality can be easily created.