Best robotics Language?

[trevben1]

hey all,
I was wondering which programming language you think is best for robotics. I'm a complete beginner in the research stage of building a robotic foosball player and I already know how to program in matlab and C+ but from what I can tell C# is the best. I want to make sure before I put in the effort to learn it though lol. Check: Publix Ad and Kroger ad on Weekly Circulars.

[DresnerRobotics]

There really isn't one.

It is entirely a matter of personal preference and what works best for you. With today's technology pretty much any language that can talk to a comm port can be used for robotics.

[trevben1]

Great! I like Matlab and find it really intuitive and since the a physical model will be fairly straight forward to program I think I'd love to use it. The one thing I wouldnt know how to do would be communicating with the comm port or usb whichever I end up using. I've had classes in both C+ and matlab but neither of them covered recieving any external inputs or delivering outputs.

[lnxfergy]

As tybs said, varies based what you want to do.

Most vision software will be C/C++ because it is fast. Same goes for any lower level code.

C# probably isn't too much slower than C/C++, but, it is somewhat proprietary.

Quite a few people around here like Python, for it ease of use, but I would have a hard time telling you to do visual processing in Python.

If at any point you need to use a microcontroller to interface with the outside world, you'll probably have to program that in C.

-Fergs

[darkback2]

A better question might be...what robotics platforms work with matlab...The dynamixel USB thingy does, and can control dynamixel servos. I think the lego mindstorms NXT does also.

Hope this helps.

DB

[trevben1]

At this point I really want to stay away from any sort of video tracking. I have some general knowledge of sensors and sensory technology but even that is sparse so I'd like to try to keep things in their simplest form. Using sensors will be fairly straightforward other than trying to track the ball.

Although this is a bit out of the scope of this conversation how would you bring input information into your program using C?

[trevben1]

To darkback:
So that plugs into your comp and then gets connected to your I/0 board? (when I say complete beginner I mean it in the purest sense of the word lol)

[lnxfergy]

At this point I really want to stay away from any sort of video tracking. I have some general knowledge of sensors and sensory technology but even that is sparse so I'd like to try to keep things in their simplest form. Using sensors will be fairly straightforward other than trying to track the ball.

Although this is a bit out of the scope of this conversation how would you bring input information into your program using C?

Note my post in your project thread.

All a PC has for interfacing with the world is ports: such as serial, parallel and USB. Note that serial and parallel ports (aka legacy ports) aren't found on many computers today, so you are stuck with USB->serial converters. You'll need an interface between outside electronics and your computer. Typically this is a microcontroller-based board that incorporates analog/digital input and output, pulse width modulation, etc. It then has some protocal that it can speak with your pc. Here's an example of communicating with an Arduino:
http://forums.trossenrobotics.com/showthread.php?t=2096

-Fergs

[trevben1]

Thanks. i'll have to look into starting to re-learning C, most of the gameplay programming shouldn't be difficult but it will take some time to figure out passing algorithms and ball control. I'll probably just start with the goalie to get the blocking code down, shouldn't be to bad. And it looks like I can just tweak the code from the tutorial that you posted Inxfergy to communicate with the electronics.

[darkback2]

That thing plus into the port on your computer, and connects directly to actuators (servo motors and such) which makes your computer the brains of your robot. That way you can use a language you already know.