Open source is FAIR – IAIS released the „Fraunhofer Autonomous Intelligent Robotics Devices Library“ as open source

Developing and programming robotic systems can sometimes be an unsatisfying task. This feeling is mostly not related to problems that occur during „high level“ problem solving. It is mostly appearing if you try to get the system it self up and running. So tools and solutions are needed to help us to overcome these initialization barriers.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems or for short Fraunhofer IAIS, does now offer a special computer library that can support the developer to get a width field of sensors and actors up and running. In addition it includes a various number of algorithmic for every day robotic problems like Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) or image processing. The so called „Fraunhofer Autonomous Intelligent Robotics Devices Library“ or for short FAIR library, is a C/C++ development library which is actively used in the VolksBot® projects and is released as open source project under the GNU-license Creative Commons.

FAIRlib is soon available at the sourceforge project „OpenVolksBot„.

Updated: The initail version is now available (see also here) and is published under the CC-by-sa-nc.

Labview Educational Edition

NI LabVIEW Education Edition software helps high school teachers bring science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) concepts to life through hands-on learning. With LabVIEW, you can quickly build a program to log data, power a robot, or analyze information. The new LabVIEW Education Edition was designed in conjunction with Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach to meet the needs of engineering educators, and works seamlessly with LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT, Vernier SensorDAQ and Go! Sensors, and TETRIX™ by Pitsco.

(taken from http://www.ni.com/academic/education_edition/)

check out the German press release