From: Rodrigo Rosenfeld Rosas <lbocseg@...>
Date: 2008-08-26T04:50:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby & Robotics?

Michael Craig wrote:

> Hello all,
>     Does anybody know if there are any good implementations of Ruby in
>     basic
> robotics? I want to learn some robotics (basic ground-level stuff, i.e.
> how to control servos from a computer with ruby) and I don't really want
> to do it in Java when I know Ruby and love it so much :). Also, anybody
> know a good place to start for getting into that kind of stuff?
> 
> Thanks,
> Mike

Actually, real robotic systems need to be real-time systems, running on
Real-time operating systems such as the Linux + Xenomai real-time extension
patch. But, for testing certain alghoritms, I think ruby could act as
Matlab, for prototyping. But you need to have in mind that you will need to
port the final alghoritm to C ou C++, since, usually, real-time system APIs
are written in those languages...

Writing realtime systems in languages such as Ruby or Java (both have
garbage collector) is not reliably (actually it is impossible in Ruby,
currently, as far as I know).

Good luck!

Rodrigo.