An application program is a computer program designed to carry out a specific task other than one relating to the operation of the computer itself, typically to be used by end-users. Word processors, media players, and accounting software are examples. The collective noun "application software" refers to all applications collectively. The other principal classifications of software are system software, relating to the operation of the computer, and utility software ("utilities").
In computing, a visual programming language or block coding is a programming language that lets users create programs by manipulating program elements graphically rather than by specifying them textually. A VPL allows programming with visual expressions, spatial arrangements of text and graphic symbols, used either as elements of syntax or secondary notation. For example, many VPLs are based on the idea of "boxes and arrows", where boxes or other screen objects are treated as entities, connected by arrows, lines or arcs which represent relations.
GLX is an extension to the X Window System core protocol providing an interface between OpenGL and the X Window System as well as extensions to OpenGL itself. It enables programs wishing to use OpenGL to do so within a window provided by the X Window System. GLX distinguishes two "states": indirect state and direct state.
TORCS is an open-source 3D car racing simulator available on Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, AmigaOS 4, AROS, MorphOS and Microsoft Windows. TORCS was created by Eric Espié and Christophe Guionneau, but project development is now headed by Bernhard Wymann. It is written in C++ and is licensed under the GNU GPL. TORCS is designed to enable pre-programmed AI drivers to race against one another, while allowing the user to control a vehicle using either a keyboard, mouse, or wheel input.
Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio is a discontinued Windows-based environment for robot control and simulation that was aimed at academic, hobbyist, and commercial developers and handled a wide variety of robot hardware. It requires a Microsoft Windows 7 operating system or later.
iRobot Create is a hobbyist robot manufactured by iRobot that was introduced in 2007 and based on their Roomba vacuum cleaning platform. The iRobot Create is explicitly designed for robotics development and improves the experience beyond simply hacking the Roomba. The Create replaces its Roomba predecessor's vacuum cleaner hardware with a cargo bay that also houses a DB-9 port providing serial communication, digital input & output, analog input & output, and an electric power supply. The Create also has a 7-pin Mini-DIN serial port through which sensor data can be read and motor commands can be issued using the iRobot Roomba Open Interface (ROI) protocol.
A robotics suite is a visual environment for robot control and simulation. They are typically an end-to-end platform for robotics development and include tools for visual programming and creating and debugging robot applications. Developers can often interact with robots through web-based or visual interfaces.
Urbi is an open-source cross-platform software computing platform written in C++ used to develop applications for robotics and complex systems. Urbi is based on the UObject distributed C++ component architecture. It also includes the urbiscript orchestration language which is a parallel and event-driven script language. UObject components can be plugged into urbiscript and appear as native objects that can be scripted to specify their interactions and data exchanges. UObjects can be linked to the urbiscript interpreter, or executed as autonomous processes in "remote" mode.
The KDE Education Project develops free educational software based on the KDE technologies for students and parents. These educational software is translated into more than 65 languages, so that users can access them without any problems. The KDE-Edu project also provides free software educational to support and facilitate teachers in planning lessons.
Webots is a free and open-source 3D robot simulator used in industry, education and research.
A robotics simulator is a simulator used to create an application for a physical robot without depending on the physical machine, thus saving cost and time. In some case, such applications can be transferred onto a physical robot without modification.
Robot Operating System is an open-source robotics middleware suite. Although ROS is not an operating system (OS) but a set of software frameworks for robot software development, it provides services designed for a heterogeneous computer cluster such as hardware abstraction, low-level device control, implementation of commonly used functionality, message-passing between processes, and package management. Running sets of ROS-based processes are represented in a graph architecture where processing takes place in nodes that may receive, post, and multiplex sensor data, control, state, planning, actuator, and other messages. Despite the importance of reactivity and low latency in robot control, ROS is not a real-time operating system (RTOS). However, it is possible to integrate ROS with real-time computing code. The lack of support for real-time systems has been addressed in the creation of ROS 2, a major revision of the ROS API which will take advantage of modern libraries and technologies for core ROS functions and add support for real-time code and embedded system hardware.
Robotics middleware is middleware to be used in complex robot control software systems.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to software:
Simbad robot simulator is an open-source cross-platform software simulator used to develop robotics and artificial intelligence applications. The Simbad project started in 2005, initially developed by Dr. Louis Hugues and is widely used for educational purposes. Simbad is distributed under the GNU General Public License. It is written in Java language and enables users to develop robot controllers in a simulated 3D environment.
The RoboCup 2D Simulated Soccer League is the oldest of the RoboCup Soccer Simulation Leagues. It consists of a number of competitions with computer simulated soccer matches as the main event.
Gazebo is an open-source 3D robotics simulator. As of 2023, it consists of two versions, known as "Gazebo Classic", the original monolithic version, and "Gazebo", a modernized collection of libraries. The latter was known for a time as "Ignition", but was renamed back to "Gazebo" in 2022.
