jvitku/nengo_1.4

Create and run detailed neural simulations

Nengo+ROS = NengoRos

This is modification of original Nengo simulator for integration with ROS infrastructure. For more information about Nengo-ros integration see: http://nengoros.wordpress.com/ .

Author: Jaroslav Vitku [[email protected]] Address of this repository: https://github.com/jvitku/nengo_1.4/

This modification is used in the "nengo-ros" package, which integrates (all credits to authors) :

• Nengo simulator - large scale neural simulations (original readme renamed to README_origNengo.rst)

• Rosjava_core - java-based implementation of ROS core

  -and potentially with some necessary ROS-components (e.g. messages) included

Together, these two packages provide platform-independent tool for simulating hybrid neural systems usable e.g. for robotic applications.

Prerequisites:

If you want to install the entire Nengo-ros multiproject (recommended), see http://nengoros.wordpress.com/ or clone the repository on https://github.com/jvitku/nengoros

If you want to install just the modified Nengoros simulator (with precompiled rosjava libraries), see the next chapter.

Installation:

To obtain the recommended complete installation, see installation instructions.

Not recommended installation:

In order to install just standalone version of Nengoros, you can use the script ./installStandalone.

• This generates eclipse projects into the folders simulator and simulator-ui.

• In Eclipse, import (simulator and simulator-ui) projects from nengo folder, run: clean & build in Eclipse.

• Launch Nengo by calling main method in class: NengoLauncher or by running scripts either simulator-ui/nengo or simulator-ui/nengo-cl.

Changelog

###nengoros-master-v0.0.4

• Added support for the my modification of the Vivae simulator. More precisely: the old version of Vivae support was removed from the Nengoros and placed into the vivae/vivaeplugin project.

###nengoros-master-v0.0.2

• Added three possibilities how to sync time between Nengo and ROS nodes: TimeMaster, TimeIgnore and TimeSlave. These are used in the ca.nengo.util.impl.NodeThreadPool.step().

• Added demos representing time synchronization in the project demonodes/basic, the corresponding python scripts are located under nr-demo/basic/time*

###nengoros-master-v0.0.1

• The first stable version. Version is mainly taken from my older repositories on bitbucket.org.

• Includes demos on rosjava, ROS nodes and native process.

• Communication with ROS nodes is synchronous or asynchronous

Technical Notes:

###Gradle tests

The project nengo/simulator has the src folder set to: src/java/test/ctu to ensure that all Nengo tests are omitted, in order to run also Nengo tests, set this folder to src/java/test.

###Other

1. Note that the standalone version contains only pre-compiled rosjava_core jar files and no additional projects, so the limitations are:

   • Does not include any demos (or those included may not work correctly).
   • User cannot define custom messages (interfaces for messages are generated during rosjava_core compilation)

2. Compared to Nengo, the build system is changed from Maven to Gradle (which is used by rosjava_core).

3. In order to distinguish between standalone and rosjava-based project settings, build.gradle and settings.gradle files under nengo and nengo/simulator-ui are appended with either *.rosjava or *.standalone, please, edit these files.