
© Copyright 2006-2007 White Box Robotics Inc. and Frontline Robotics Inc
Player/Stage Software Introduction
Player
Player is a network server for robot control. Installed on your robot, Player provides an elegant and
simple interface to the robot's sensors and actuators over IP networks. The client program, potentially
loaded on a remote client-computer talks to Player via a TCP socket, reading data from sensors,
writing commands to actuators, and configuring devices on the fly. It is officially described as a server
running on a robot providing access to hardware and sensors to remote programs.
How Player works
The Player server software provides an abstract interface to multiple robotic devices, including mobile
robot bases, sensors, etc as well as your 914 PC-BOT. Player communicates with these specific
devices using individual device drivers, but provides to its client-side a standard generic device
interface. For example, Player may use SICK LMS-200 and Pioneer drivers, but simply provides to
clients "laser" and "position" ("position" is a movable mobile robot base), "sonar", etc. interfaces. This
allows clients to be portable to other robots.
The readers should note: All three programs, Player, Stage and Gazebo, have the same interface so programs
used in either of the simulation programs can be used unchanged on the robots. They are designed to work
together and provide distinct features.
The most common way to use Player is to run the player server on your robot, then access your robot's
devices with a client program running on a desktop or laptop computer.
Robot Operation
To access a robot, you need to write (or edit) a Player configuration file, (usually with the
extension
.cfg)
that points at the driver(s) software required to control your robot. This links Player,
through the device driver and configures the hardware to the Player software.
The job of this
configuration file is to map the physical devices on the robot to the virtual Player devices (so that
is shows and can be controlled inside the simulated environment).
We provide the following for the default configuration 914 PC-BOT at this location:
/home/wbr/wbr914.cfg