TREX Executive

asked 2017-05-26 09:04:48 -0500

Fast Clutch gravatar image

updated 2017-05-26 09:07:55 -0500

I am looking for an executive ROS package to automatically execute actions, regardless of the type of action (call to a topic, service, libaction). I know of the existence of Smach and Teer which suits quite well ROS philosophy. However, there is a third one, TREX, which use in ROS doesn't seem very clear to me for different reasons. My questions are:

  1. TREX provides a structure to exchange information, the token, and a communication system to exchange tokens between reactors. That seems to me as an overlapping with ROS itself which goes way beyond the responsibilities of an executive (e.g. Smach or Teer). Any clarification on this respect?
  2. TREX presents a synchronized approach by which all the reactors need to synchronize at every tick. Again, it seems to go agains ROS philosophy and the normal nature of robotic problems, in which events happen in a non-synchronous manner, so that the system does not need to be checking all the time for certain conditions but rather to observe and react when these conditions arise.
  3. TREX seem to present a monolitical approach (the TREX agent), that combine different activities (planning and executing). This doesn't seem in line with modern robotic architectural approaches, specially with ROS, in which activities are distributed across multiple nodes. What do you think?
  4. I see that there is not much information about the ROS T-REX package. Is it still supported? For which ROS versions?
  5. Finally, has any one used TREX in recent ROS projects? Could you explain the reasons?

Regards

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Comments

The wiki page for TREX states this:

executive_trex is no longer being maintained. It was maintained up until the ROS C Turtle release.

C Turtle was released in 2010, 7 years ago. I doubt someone with enough ..

gvdhoorn gravatar image gvdhoorn  ( 2017-05-26 10:28:33 -0500 )edit

.. familiarity with the ros trex implementation to answer your questions is still frequenting this board, but you never know.

Also: smach and teer are hardly the only other executives these days. If you look around there are a couple more.

gvdhoorn gravatar image gvdhoorn  ( 2017-05-26 10:29:38 -0500 )edit