CoR-Lab Tutorials

h1. Overview

h2. What are RSB and the RS* ecosystem?

In one sentence, RSB and the RS* ecosystem are a collection of software projects that support the development, operation and analysis of event-based multi-platform, multi-language distributed systems developed by the cognitive systems engineering group.

OK, but what does that actually mean?

> RSB and the RS* ecosystem

Most of these projects are named "RS<some letter>" where "RS" is short for "Robotics Systems". Here are the most commonly used ones:

| RSC   | Robotics Systems Commons   | A C++ library of frequently needed functions        |

| RSB   | Robotics Service Bus       | See next paragraph                                  |

| RSBag | Robotics Systems Bag Tools | Record/replay communication between programs        |

| RST   | Robotics Systems Types     | Collection of data types; supporting infrastructure |

> event-based […] distributed systems

The main purpose of RSB is to enable software components, potentially running on multiple computers, to exchange data in a principled and efficient way. Events are one kind of flexible building block form which more complex forms of communication can be constructed. Events are routed transparently to participating components over a logically unified bus architecture that can be established using different network protocols according to application requirements. 

> development, operation and analysis of […] systems

Applications using RSB, their communication and involved data types can be inspected, monitored, recorded, replayed and analyzed. These features aid the development, operation and analysis of systems.

> multi-platform

RSB and the RS* ecosystem can be used on Linux, MacOS, Windows and Android. The native C++ implementation runs on standard x86 as well as ARM-based systems such as the "BeagleBoard":http://beagleboard.org/.

> multi-language

Components using RSB and the RS* ecosystem can be written in C++, Python, Java, Common Lisp and with some restrictions Matlab.

> developed by the Cognitive System Engineering Group

See http://www.cor-lab.de/cognitive-systems-engineering. For the kinds of support we provide , see next section.

h2. Documentation

|_. Project   |_. Project Website                                        |_. Manual                                                                                          |_. API Documentation |

| RSC         | "Redmine Project":http://code.cor-lab.org/projects/rsc   |                                                                                                   |                     |

| RSB         | "Redmine Project":http://code.cor-lab.org/projects/rsb   | "RSB Manual (includes RSB tools)":http://docs.cor-lab.org/rsb-manual/0.10/html/index.html         | "C++":http://docs.cor-lab.org/rsb-cpp-api/0.10/html/ "Python":http://docs.cor-lab.org/rsb-python-api/0.10/html/ "Java":http://docs.cor-lab.org/rsb-java-api/0.10/html |

| RSBag       | "Redmine Project":http://code.cor-lab.org/projects/rsbag | "RSBag Manual (includes RSBag tools)":http://docs.cor-lab.org/rsbag-manual/0.10/html/index.html   |                   |

| RST         | "Redmine Project":http://code.cor-lab.org/projects/rst   | "RST Manual (includes data type catalog)":http://docs.cor-lab.org/rst-manual/0.10/html/index.html |                   |

h2. Access

On Ubuntu Trusty systems, RSB and the RS* ecosystem can be accessed in two ways:

# Using the pre-installed software in @/vol/isy/2014-15/releases/trusty/@

# Using Debian packages (see "instructions":http://packages.cor-lab.org/)

In both cases, RS* software can be used in software projects as described in the "build system tutorial":http://docs.cor-lab.de/build%20system%20essentials-tutorial/trunk/html/index.html.

|_. Software  |_. @/vol/isy/@                                                          |_. Debian Package(s)                                       |

| RSC         |                                                                        | C++: @librsc0.10@                                         |

| RSB         |                                                                        | C++: @rsb-tools-cpp0.10@, Common Lisp: @rsb-tools-cl0.10@ |

| RSB Tools   | @/vol/isy/2014-15/releases/trusty/bin/rsb-{logger,send,…}{cl,cpp}0.10@ | C++: @librsb0.10@                                         |

| RSBag Tools | @/vol/isy/2014-15/releases/trusty/bin/bag-{record,play,…}cl0.10@       | Common Lisp: @rsbag-bin-cl0.10@                           |

| RST         |                                                                        | C++, Python, Java: @rst0.10@                              |

h2. Support

* Mailing-list

** Write: mailto:rsb@lists.cor-lab.uni-bielefeld.de

** Subscribe: https://lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/cor-lab/mailman/listinfo/rsb

* IRC: #rsb IRC channel on irc.freenode.net

* Reporting Bugs: @https://code.cor-lab.org/projects/rs*/issues/new@.