Experiments

In the book we described many experiments you can conduct yourself with our simulation environment.

Requirements

Download and Installation

We have prepared binaries for different Linux platforms. For Ubuntu-based systems (e.g. Ubuntu, Mint,...) you should install the packages with your software manager, see below. They run much faster than the other binaries.

On all other systems you have to identify your system configuration first. Then download the appropriate file (see table) and save it on your disk.

System32bit: i68664bit: x86_64
Kernel 2.X Download 1.0 Download 1.0
Kernel 3.X Download 1.0 Download 1.0

You need to unpack the archive which creates a directory with the same name. Open the file index.html in that directory with your web browser and follow the instructions there.

   That's it. Have fun!

Identify your system

Open a terminal window (search for "Terminal" in your Applications menu, or find it under Accessories or System or alternatively execute xterm in your program launcher). On the console type 
uname -r
the output is the kernel version, e.g. something like: 
2.6.32-34-generic
To determine the platform type 
uname -m
which may be something like x86_64 or i686 or higher.

back to download

Unpacking the tar archive

Typically your favorite file browser offers an option for unpacking archives in the context menu or the archive is automatically opened in a archive manager. There you can intuitively extract the containing directory. Alternatively you can run in a terminal tar -xvzf ThePlayfulMachine-Experiments*.tar.gz in the directory where you downloaded the file.

back to download

Install packages via software manager (for Ubuntu based systems only)

Open a terminal and execute: 
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:georg-martius/lpzrobots
sudo apt-get update
This makes your software manager aware of our repository. Now simply run 
sudo apt-get install playfulmachines
The simulations and the experimentpage are now located at /opt/playfulmachines. You need have the permissions to write in the simulation directories. Now type
either 
sudo chmod -R go+r /opt/playfulmachines
or copy the entire folder to your home-directory by (recommended) 
cp -r /opt/playfulmachines $HOME/
Open the file index.html in that folder with your web browser.

Now you are done!

How to uninstall

If you downloaded the binary tar file, you can simply delete the entire folder. If you installed it via the software manager you can also delete it there, simply search for the package playfulmachines or type 
sudo apt-get autoremove playfulmachines

If you want to program yourself

You can also get the sources of all experiments, they are open source.

If you installed it via the packages then you have the sources already. They are in /opt/playfulmachines/Simulations/src/. The simulations are called from the experiment page via scripts located in playfulmachines/Experiments. Check them to figure out which simulation and commandline parameters belong to the which experiment.

Otherwise you can download the sources seperately. Then you also need to install the lpzrobots simulator.








Content: © Copyright 2011, Ralf Der and Georg Martius; Impressum. Parts of the page have been translated from LATEX by HEVEA.