Debian Science Project
Summary
Robotics
Debian Robotics packages

This metapackage is part of the Debian Pure Blend "Debian Science" and installs packages related to Robotics.

You might also be interested in the science-engineering metapackage.

The list to the right includes various software projects which are of some interest to the Debian Science Project. Currently, only a few of them are available as Debian packages. It is our goal, however, to include all software in Debian Science which can sensibly add to a high quality Debian Pure Blend.

For a better overview of the project's availability as a Debian package, each head row has a color code according to this scheme:

If you discover a project which looks like a good candidate for Debian Science to you, or if you have prepared an unofficial Debian package, please do not hesitate to send a description of that project to the Debian Science mailing list

Links to other tasks

Debian Science Robotics packages

Official Debian packages with high relevance

Gnuplot
A command-line driven interactive plotting program
Maintainer: Bradley Smith
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Gnuplot is a portable command-line driven interactive data and function plotting utility that supports lots of output formats, including drivers for many printers, (La)TeX, (x)fig, Postscript, and so on. The X11-output is packaged in gnuplot-x11.

Data files and self-defined functions can be manipulated by the internal C-like language. Can perform smoothing, spline-fitting, or nonlinear fits, and can work with complex numbers.

This package is for transition and to install a full-featured gnuplot supporting the X11-output.

Screenshots of package gnuplot
Libboost-dev
Boost C++ Libraries development files (default version)
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The Boost web site provides free, peer-reviewed, portable C++ source libraries. The emphasis is on libraries which work well with the C++ Standard Library. One goal is to establish "existing practice" and provide reference implementations so that the Boost libraries are suitable for eventual standardization. Some of the libraries have already been proposed for inclusion in the C++ Standards Committee's upcoming C++ Standard Library Technical Report.

This package is a dependency package, which depends on Debian's default Boost version (currently 1.40).

Libcoin40-runtime
high-level 3D graphics kit - external data files
Maintainer: Steve M. Robbins
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External data files used by the Coin library at run-time. The dragger geometry files represent the defaults that are used if the files are not found. This package is completely optional.

For more information on Coin, see http://www.coin3d.org/.

Libcomedi0
Library for Comedi
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Comedilib is a library for using Comedi, a driver interface for data acquisition hardware. Comedi supports a wide variety of ISA and PCI devices that contain analog-to-digital converters, digital-to-analog converters, digital input/output, counters and timers. The full list of support devices can be found in the libcomedi-dev documentation.

This package contains the shared library component of Comedilib. In general, this package will be automatically installed as a dependency of application or other library packages.

In order to effectively use this package, you need to have compiled and installed the Comedi kernel modules. The source for Comedi is available in the comedi-source package, which also contains instructions on how to compile and install the modules.

Libcv1
computer vision library
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This package contains the OpenCV (Open Computer Vision) runtime libraries.

The Open Computer Vision Library is a collection of algorithms and sample code for various computer vision problems. The library is compatible with IPL (Intel's Image Processing Library) and, if available, can use IPP (Intel's Integrated Performance Primitives) for better performance.

OpenCV provides low level portable data types and operators, and a set of high level functionalities for video acquisition, image processing and analysis, structural analysis, motion analysis and object tracking, object recognition, camera calibration and 3D reconstruction.

Libopenigtlink1
Open IGT Link is a simple network protocol - runtime
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Open IGT Link is a simple network protocol intended for trackers, robots and other devices to send data to the main application. Some devices might also accept commands.

This package contains library files for OpenIGTLink.

Libvtk5
Visualization Toolkit - A high level 3D visualization library
Maintainer: A. Maitland Bottoms
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VTK - the Visualization Toolkit is an object oriented, high level library that allows one to easily write C++ programs, Tcl, Python and Java scripts that do 3D visualization. This package provides the shared libraries needed to run C++ programs that use VTK. To compile C++ code that uses VTK you have to install libvtk5-dev.

VTK enables users to concentrate on their work by providing a large number of excellent and feature packed high level functions that do visualization. The library needs OpenGL to render the graphics and for Linux machines Mesa is necessary. The terms/copyright can be read in /usr/share/doc/vtk/README and README.html. VTK-Linux-HOWTO has information about using vtk, getting documentataion or help and instructions on building VTK.

Octave
GNU Octave language for numerical computations (2.1 branch)
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Octave is a (mostly Matlab (R) compatible) high-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations. It provides a convenient command-line interface for solving linear and nonlinear problems numerically.

This package is an empty 'virtual' package whose sole purpose is to install the current Octave version from the 2.1 branch (the recommended testing branch) .

Once you have the octave2.1 package installed, you can remove this package.

The package is enhanced by the following packages: texmacs
Octave3.0
GNU Octave language for numerical computations (3.0 branch)
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Octave is a (mostly Matlab (R) compatible) high-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations. It provides a convenient command-line interface for solving linear and nonlinear problems numerically.

Octave uses some of the best and most respected numerical libraries as balgen, dassl, eispack, fftpack, lapack, linpack, minpack, odepack, ranlib, slatec-fn and villad. Octave can be dynamically extended with user-supplied C++ files.

Screenshots of package octave3.0
Robot-player
Networked server for robots and sensors
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Provides a network interface to a variety of robot and sensor hardware. Player's client/server model allows robot control programs to be written in any programming language and to run on any computer with a network connection to th e robot. Player supports multiple concurrent client connections to devices, creating new possibilities for distributed and collaborative sensing and control.

Player supports a wide variety of mobile robots and accessories.

Rtai
Real Time Application Interface
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RTAI is a realtime extension with a broad variety of services which make realtime programmers' lifes easier. Some of them are

 choose between FIFO and RR scheduling policies on a per task basis.
 extended POSIX APIs and message queues, in kernel and user space
 semaphores can be typed as: counting, binary and resource
 a mailbox implementation
 LXRT for hard real time in user space

This is a metapackage that depends on the latest versions of the individual RTAI packages.

Xenomai-runtime
Xenomai runtime utilities
Maintainer: Roland Stigge
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Xenomai is a real-time development framework cooperating with the Linux kernel in order to provide a pervasive, interface-agnostic, hard real-time support to user-space applications, seamlessly integrated into the GNU/Linux environment. Xenomai provides its own API and emulation layers ("skins") to make migration from other RTOS easier. Examples are: pSOS+, VxWorks, VRTX, uiTRON, RTAI, POSIX.

This package contains the runtime programs and the testsuite for the Xenomai realtime system.

Debian packages in experimental

Octave3.1
GNU Octave language for numerical computations (3.1 branch)
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Octave is a (mostly Matlab (R) compatible) high-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations. It provides a convenient command-line interface for solving linear and nonlinear problems numerically.

Octave uses some of the best and most respected numerical libraries as balgen, dassl, eispack, fftpack, lapack, linpack, minpack, odepack, ranlib, slatec-fn and villad. Octave can be dynamically extended with user-supplied C++ files.

The recommended branch of Octave is 3.0. The 3.1 branch is experimental and is considered to be unstable.

Unofficial packages built by somebody else

Orocos-bfl
framework for inference in Dynamic Bayesian Networks
License: GPL + runtime exception

The Bayesian Filtering Library (BFL) provides an application independent framework for inference in Dynamic Bayesian Networks, i.e., recursive information processing and estimation algorithms based on Bayes' rule, such as (Extended) Kalman Filters, Particle Filters (or Sequential Monte Carlo methods), etc. These algorithms can, for example, be run on top of the Realtime Services, or be used for estimation in Kinematics & Dynamics applications.

Orocos-ocl
Orocos Component Library
License: LGPL

The Orocos Component Library uses the Real-Time Toolkit (RTT) for constructing all its components. Some components use the Kinematics and Dynamics Library (KDL), the Bayesian Filtering Library (BFL) or other libraries.

Orocos-rtt
Orocos Real-Time Toolkit
License: GPL + runtime exception

The Orocos Real-Time Toolkit (RTT) is not an application in itself, but it provides the infrastructure and the functionalities to build robotics applications in C++. The emphasis is on real-time, online interactive and component based applications.

No known packages available

D-collide
D-Collide is a real-time collision detection library aimed
License: BSD
Debian package not available

at performance and accuracy, that supports rigid objects as well as deformables - such as cloth - including self-collision detection.

Orca
developing component-based robotic systems
License: LGPL and GPL
Debian package not available

Orca is an open-source framework for developing component-based robotic systems. It provides the means for defining and developing the building-blocks which can be pieced together to form arbitrarily complex robotic systems, from single vehicles to distributed sensor networks.

Orocos-kdl
Kinematics and Dynamics Library
License: LGPL
Debian package not available

The Kinematics and Dynamics Library (KDL) develops an application independent framework for modelling and computation of kinematic chains, such as robots, biomechanical human models, computer-animated figures, machine tools, etc. It provides class libraries for geometrical objects (point, frame, line,... ), kinematic chains of various families (serial, humanoid, parallel, mobile,... ), and their motion specification and interpolation.

Roboop
synthesis, and simulation of robotic manipulator models
License: GPL
Debian package not available

ROBOOP is a C++ robotics object oriented programming toolbox suitable for synthesis, and simulation of robotic manipulator models in an environment that provides MATLAB like'' features for the treatment of matrices. Its is a portable tool that does not require the use of commercial software.

Rtnet
hard real-time network protocol stack
License: GPL
Debian package not available

RTnet is an Open Soure hard real-time network protocol stack for Xenomai and RTAI (real-time Linux extensions). It makes use of standard Ethernet hardware and supports several popular NIC chip sets, including Gigabit Ethernet. Moreover, Ethernet-over-1394 support is available based on the RT-FireWire protocol stack.

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