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Very neat! How much work would it be to write ROS bindings so you could control robots easily with it? Googling around, I found one team that has done it with P

Very neat! How much work would it be to write ROS bindings so you could control robots easily with it? Googling around, I found one team that has done it with Pharo: http://car.imt-lille-douai.fr/category/software/pharos/ http://car.imt-lille-douai.fr/category/software/pharos/

johndoe0815 6y ago
Robot control would be a fascinating applications (but my students had to program our robots in C [1] ;-)). I am not an expert in ROS, but there have been other projects using Smalltalk for robotics, such as NXTalk [2] and a Squeak-based system [3]. A more general paper discusses the challenges in using Smalltalk for robotics applications [4]. So it should be possible to do this on the Smalltalk-80 bare-metal port. One problem that will definitely show up, though, is the limited memory space and number of objects of Smalltalk-80, since it uses a 16 bit VM. Modern robotics applications involving complex SLAM approaches, object recognition or LiDAR might be a bit challenging for this, so I think a more modern 32 bit based VM such as Squeak or Pharo is more appropriate here. (edit: links reformatted) [1] https://www.hs-coburg.de/news-detailseite/roboterrennen-im-labor.html https://www.hs-coburg.de/news-detailseite/roboterrennen-im-l... (sorry, in German only) [2] https://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/projects/nxtalk/index.html https://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/projects/nxtalk/in... [3] Joaquin Sitte, Robotics and Robotics Education with Smalltalk, AMiRE 2005 [4] LaLonde, W., Thomas, D., Johnson, K., Smalltalk as a programming language for robotics?, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 1987 - http://www.menneske.org/projects/bachelorsproject/Articles/smalltalk%20as%20a%20programming%20language%20for%20robotics.pdf http://www.menneske.org/projects/bachelorsproject/Articles/s...

johndoe0815 6y ago

Robot control would be a fascinating applications (but my students had to program our robots in C [1] ;-)). I am not an expert in ROS, but there have been other projects using Smalltalk for robotics, such as NXTalk [2] and a Squeak-based system [3]. A more general paper discusses the challenges in using Smalltalk for robotics applications [4]. So it should be possible to do this on the Smalltalk-80 bare-metal port. One problem that will definitely show up, though, is the limited memory space and number of objects of Smalltalk-80, since it uses a 16 bit VM. Modern robotics applications involving complex SLAM approaches, object recognition or LiDAR might be a bit challenging for this, so I think a more modern 32 bit based VM such as Squeak or Pharo is more appropriate here. (edit: links reformatted) [1] https://www.hs-coburg.de/news-detailseite/roboterrennen-im-labor.html https://www.hs-coburg.de/news-detailseite/roboterrennen-im-l... (sorry, in German only) [2] https://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/projects/nxtalk/index.html https://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/projects/nxtalk/in... [3] Joaquin Sitte, Robotics and Robotics Education with Smalltalk, AMiRE 2005 [4] LaLonde, W., Thomas, D., Johnson, K., Smalltalk as a programming language for robotics?, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 1987 - http://www.menneske.org/projects/bachelorsproject/Articles/smalltalk%20as%20a%20programming%20language%20for%20robotics.pdf http://www.menneske.org/projects/bachelorsproject/Articles/s...