Orocos Project History

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Orocos stands for "Open Robot Control Software".<

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The Orocos Logo: The Orocos logo resembles the letter 'O' which stands for 'Open'. It is formed by two robotic grippers which reach to each other, symbolizing collaboration.
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<span>The idea for starting a Free Software project for robot control was born in December 2000, motivated by over two decades of rather disappointing experiences and failures in trying to use commercial robot control software for advanced robotics research. The idea, together with a draft of a possible project proposal, was launched on the mailinglist of EURON, the European Robotics Network. This email gave rise to a lot of responses, even though it was sent during the Christmas period. Within about two weeks, a proposal (which became IST-2000-31064) was
made ready, and sent to the European Union. Contacts with the responsible Officer made clear that the size of the project had to be very modest, so that only three partners were selected: K.U.Leuven in Belgium ( Orocos@KUL ), LAAS Toulouse in France ( Orocos@LAAS ), and KTH Stockholm in Sweden ( Orocos@KTH ). Each of these three groups would later receive only one full man-year of support. The EU-sponsored project started in September 2001, and had a duration for two years.<span>

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The EU sponsoring also provides some travel grants to invite non-sponsored people to the Orocos project meetings. This, together with the classical attributes of a web page and a mailinglist, stimulated quite some discussions and exchanges of ideas.<

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A first version of the hard real-time core was released in the Summer of 2002, but it was very preliminary and hard to use. In November 2002, the first version was released with which simple
position and velocity control of a six degrees-of-freedom robot manipulator arm was possible.<

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After the EU sponsored project was finished, the project partners continued to improve on the delivered software. The realtime Orocos framework developments at the KU Leuven, knew already 7 major software releases after September 2003. At KTH Stockholm, several releases have been made for component-based robotic systems, and the project has been renamed to Orca. Although not a project funded partner, the FAW Ulm maintains Free CORBA communication patterns for modular robotics : Orocos@FAW.<

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Because of its applicability to industrial applications, the realtime Orocos framework has grown into the machine control field and outgrown its robotics roots. The modularity of Orocos packages reflects this versatility. Currently, the Flanders Mechatronics Technology Centre sponsors the development of the realtime Orocos framework and coordinates the integration of Orocos in industrial machines of machinetool builders. Users and contributors around the world use Orocos software for sensor data processing, kinematics an machine or robot control. The copyright on Orocos code is shared by more than 20 contributors from various countries.<