4 ms·

Gobot – Go framework for robotics, physical computing, internet of things

151 points by beliu 12y ago

beliu 12y ago
Gobot looks really slick. Here's a link to our liveblog of their talk today at GopherCon. All the code examples for their demos (Game of Life using Spheros, AR Drone with LED light, AR Drone controlled by PS3 controller + EEG device around the pilot's head) were under 100 lines of Go code. Can't wait to play around with this. http://gophercon.sourcegraph.com/post/83843443678/gobot-go-powered-robots http://gophercon.sourcegraph.com/post/83843443678/gobot-go-p...
cyounkins 12y ago
Note that this does not run Go on the robot, it runs Go on a host computer and communicates with the robot with Firmata.
- alexcroox 12y ago
  Yer still waiting for someone to allow me to use these frameworks without ball chaining them to another device in order to use them :(
  - kator 12y ago
    Make a Raspberry Pi robot and run go on the Pi http://dave.cheney.net/tag/go-golang-raspberrypi http://dave.cheney.net/tag/go-golang-raspberrypi
  - cyounkins 12y ago
    We'll need to wait for a Go compiler for the target architecture, and I doubt that will ever happen for AVR. ARM is more promising with something like the Cortex M0+, but even then there are hurdles like the runtime size.
- beliu 12y ago
  If you want an example of Go "truly" running on embedded devices, check out Gatt, a Go package for building Bluetooth Low Energy peripherals. https://github.com/paypal/gatt https://github.com/paypal/gatt A writeup of their talk at GopherCon: http://gophercon.sourcegraph.com/post/83731231041/bluetooth-low-energy-and-embedded-go http://gophercon.sourcegraph.com/post/83731231041/bluetooth-...
dpritchett 12y ago
Gobot also has sister libs in Ruby and Node! I have used the Ruby one a bit and it's a ton of fun. I've had a bear of a time with the bluetooth support under Ubuntu though. I guess I need to try Gobot with my Sphero ASAP. Ron Evans (One of the gobot devs from the blog post linked in beliu's post) was also named a Ruby Hero a few days ago. He was tremendously inspiring in this podcast on teaching kids to program [1]. I dug it so much I wound up demoing a sphero and a "talking fruit keyboard" at a local career day a few months after I heard him. [1] http://rubyrogues.com/141-rr-teaching-kids-with-ron-evans http://rubyrogues.com/141-rr-teaching-kids-with-ron-evans
- wasd 12y ago
  In case anyone is wondering, this is the sister library in Ruby http://artoo.io/ http://artoo.io/ I'm not sure but I think this is the nodejs one: http://robotwebtools.org/ http://robotwebtools.org/
  - bjpirt 12y ago
    I think the node one is http://cylonjs.com/ http://cylonjs.com/ All are pretty great, and I'm looking forward to adding support for Mirobot (http://mirobot.io http://mirobot.io)
solojavier 12y ago
Really cool project!
cpalafox90 12y ago
Awesome robotics framework, gotta try it out!
wyager 12y ago
Why use Go for embedded systems in robots? It doesn't make any sense. Go relies strongly on the existence of a heap, and doesn't have strong real-time properties.
- mholt 12y ago
  Not as much as you'd think: Go uses the stack. And evidently the soft real-time support is good enough to fly drones and control robots. I saw it today. All of their demos at GopherCon, including the face recognition one, had Sleep calls in it because otherwise it would operate too fast for comprehension and would make the robots/drones hard to control.
  - wyager 12y ago
    >Go uses the stack Only insofar as all programming languages with stack frames tend to use the stack. Many of Go's core language features require the presence of a heap. > And evidently the soft real-time support is good enough to fly drones and control robots. I could probably control a drone with Javascript. It doesn't mean that I should, nor that I can guarantee that it will work all the time. >had Sleep calls in it because otherwise it would operate too fast for comprehension and would make the robots/drones hard to control. This means nothing. Just because the language happens to be more than fast enough for a certain thing doesn't mean it will be more than fast enough for all things.
- ssully 12y ago
  In real world robotic applications you would make a very strong point, but there is always an educational angle. I have been interested in learning Go for awhile and recently have been tinkering with robotics. With Gobot I might actually take the plunge and give Go a shot.
  - wyager 12y ago
    I'm a fan of Go, but it's really not at all suited to robotics. The only area I would say Go is "good" for is web services. It's really a pretty mediocre language for anything else. The type system is kind of horrendous, there's no clean way of generic programming, etc. It's really not good for many things, least of all robotics. If you want to get into Go, I recommend writing a web server. It shows you the good parts of Go, and where it's useful.
mholt 12y ago
Saw the live demo for this today at GopherCon; really impressive! The Go code was surprisingly simple and intuitive, yet low-level enough to have tight control.
- jonathanoliver 12y ago
  I was there too. There were like 6 demos during the presentation--all of them were awesome! The first rule of presentations is to minimize demonstrations because things can go wrong, but all of there demos were amazing and went off without a hitch. I too thought Go was only a server-side language, but they showed it runs great on embedded devices.
  - schleppy_oc 12y ago
    This... exactly. Presentation was great. Presenters were really good. Gobot looks solid.
ThomPete 12y ago
Off-Topic I want to get further into the robotics area but from a design/UX perspective. (Information dashboards, remote controlling interfaces, fleet management interfaces, visual programming interfaces etc) If anyone has any projects they could use some design help for, fell free to hit me up. My mail is in my profile.
- hugs 12y ago
  off-off-topic... I could really use help with the software UI for my mobile testing robot -- Tapster (tapsterbot.com). I'll email you, but for anyone else reading... Tapster is an open source (hardware and software) Arduino + Node-powered deltabot for testing applications on smartphones and tablets. It's totally awesome, but I need all kinds of help!
georgeecollins 12y ago
Looks great-- where's the Raspberry Pi support? Or am I missing something?
georgeecollins 12y ago
Looks great-- where's the Raspberry Pi support? Or am I missing something?

151 points by beliu 12y ago

beliu 12y ago

Gobot looks really slick. Here's a link to our liveblog of their talk today at GopherCon. All the code examples for their demos (Game of Life using Spheros, AR Drone with LED light, AR Drone controlled by PS3 controller + EEG device around the pilot's head) were under 100 lines of Go code. Can't wait to play around with this. http://gophercon.sourcegraph.com/post/83843443678/gobot-go-powered-robots http://gophercon.sourcegraph.com/post/83843443678/gobot-go-p...

cyounkins 12y ago

Note that this does not run Go on the robot, it runs Go on a host computer and communicates with the robot with Firmata.

alexcroox 12y ago
Yer still waiting for someone to allow me to use these frameworks without ball chaining them to another device in order to use them :(
- kator 12y ago
  Make a Raspberry Pi robot and run go on the Pi http://dave.cheney.net/tag/go-golang-raspberrypi http://dave.cheney.net/tag/go-golang-raspberrypi
- cyounkins 12y ago
  We'll need to wait for a Go compiler for the target architecture, and I doubt that will ever happen for AVR. ARM is more promising with something like the Cortex M0+, but even then there are hurdles like the runtime size.
beliu 12y ago
If you want an example of Go "truly" running on embedded devices, check out Gatt, a Go package for building Bluetooth Low Energy peripherals. https://github.com/paypal/gatt https://github.com/paypal/gatt A writeup of their talk at GopherCon: http://gophercon.sourcegraph.com/post/83731231041/bluetooth-low-energy-and-embedded-go http://gophercon.sourcegraph.com/post/83731231041/bluetooth-...

dpritchett 12y ago

Gobot also has sister libs in Ruby and Node! I have used the Ruby one a bit and it's a ton of fun. I've had a bear of a time with the bluetooth support under Ubuntu though. I guess I need to try Gobot with my Sphero ASAP. Ron Evans (One of the gobot devs from the blog post linked in beliu's post) was also named a Ruby Hero a few days ago. He was tremendously inspiring in this podcast on teaching kids to program [1]. I dug it so much I wound up demoing a sphero and a "talking fruit keyboard" at a local career day a few months after I heard him. [1] http://rubyrogues.com/141-rr-teaching-kids-with-ron-evans http://rubyrogues.com/141-rr-teaching-kids-with-ron-evans

wasd 12y ago
In case anyone is wondering, this is the sister library in Ruby http://artoo.io/ http://artoo.io/ I'm not sure but I think this is the nodejs one: http://robotwebtools.org/ http://robotwebtools.org/
- bjpirt 12y ago
  I think the node one is http://cylonjs.com/ http://cylonjs.com/ All are pretty great, and I'm looking forward to adding support for Mirobot (http://mirobot.io http://mirobot.io)

solojavier 12y ago

Really cool project!

cpalafox90 12y ago

Awesome robotics framework, gotta try it out!

wyager 12y ago

Why use Go for embedded systems in robots? It doesn't make any sense. Go relies strongly on the existence of a heap, and doesn't have strong real-time properties.

mholt 12y ago
Not as much as you'd think: Go uses the stack. And evidently the soft real-time support is good enough to fly drones and control robots. I saw it today. All of their demos at GopherCon, including the face recognition one, had Sleep calls in it because otherwise it would operate too fast for comprehension and would make the robots/drones hard to control.
- wyager 12y ago
  >Go uses the stack Only insofar as all programming languages with stack frames tend to use the stack. Many of Go's core language features require the presence of a heap. > And evidently the soft real-time support is good enough to fly drones and control robots. I could probably control a drone with Javascript. It doesn't mean that I should, nor that I can guarantee that it will work all the time. >had Sleep calls in it because otherwise it would operate too fast for comprehension and would make the robots/drones hard to control. This means nothing. Just because the language happens to be more than fast enough for a certain thing doesn't mean it will be more than fast enough for all things.
ssully 12y ago
In real world robotic applications you would make a very strong point, but there is always an educational angle. I have been interested in learning Go for awhile and recently have been tinkering with robotics. With Gobot I might actually take the plunge and give Go a shot.
- wyager 12y ago
  I'm a fan of Go, but it's really not at all suited to robotics. The only area I would say Go is "good" for is web services. It's really a pretty mediocre language for anything else. The type system is kind of horrendous, there's no clean way of generic programming, etc. It's really not good for many things, least of all robotics. If you want to get into Go, I recommend writing a web server. It shows you the good parts of Go, and where it's useful.

mholt 12y ago

Saw the live demo for this today at GopherCon; really impressive! The Go code was surprisingly simple and intuitive, yet low-level enough to have tight control.

jonathanoliver 12y ago
I was there too. There were like 6 demos during the presentation--all of them were awesome! The first rule of presentations is to minimize demonstrations because things can go wrong, but all of there demos were amazing and went off without a hitch. I too thought Go was only a server-side language, but they showed it runs great on embedded devices.
- schleppy_oc 12y ago
  This... exactly. Presentation was great. Presenters were really good. Gobot looks solid.

ThomPete 12y ago

Off-Topic I want to get further into the robotics area but from a design/UX perspective. (Information dashboards, remote controlling interfaces, fleet management interfaces, visual programming interfaces etc) If anyone has any projects they could use some design help for, fell free to hit me up. My mail is in my profile.

hugs 12y ago
off-off-topic... I could really use help with the software UI for my mobile testing robot -- Tapster (tapsterbot.com). I'll email you, but for anyone else reading... Tapster is an open source (hardware and software) Arduino + Node-powered deltabot for testing applications on smartphones and tablets. It's totally awesome, but I need all kinds of help!

georgeecollins 12y ago

Looks great-- where's the Raspberry Pi support? Or am I missing something?

georgeecollins 12y ago

Looks great-- where's the Raspberry Pi support? Or am I missing something?