8. Architecture

Player was designed from the beginning to be easily extended by adding new devices and by adding new functionality to existing devices. In fact, Player is really a general-purpose device server; we just happen to use it for controlling our robots. You could use it to provide a simple, clean interface to any sensors or actuators you have. We describe in this chapter the overall system architecture and how you would go about adding your own devices. After reading this chapter, you should consult the code for the existing devices as examples for writing your own. Also, keep in mind that the code may change faster than this document, so the details given here may not always be up to date.