iLab's Version of liburg
------------------------
This is a hacked version of Satofumi Kamimura's URG library for Hokuyo
laser range finders. It was hacked by Manu Viswanathan for use in some
of iLab's robots and for smooth integration with iLab's Neuromorphic
Visualization Toolkit.

Complaints regarding this version of liburg should be addressed to
mviswana@usc.edu and *not* to Satofumi Kamimura.

Differences Between This and the Original liburg
------------------------------------------------
The original liburg is spread over three libraries: one encapsulating
serial communications with the laser range finder device, another
encapsulating OS functionality, and the third containing the URG API.
Furthermore, the original code base contains C++ libraries and sample
programs.

This version does away with the C++ libraries and sample programs. Also,
the OS encapsulation library (libsystem and libc_system) is gone. This
means that this version of liburg is only going to work on a Unix system
(specifically, a GNU/Linux box); support for Windows and Mac has been
removed. Finally, the serial communications library is collapsed into
the one containing the URG API, which is now pure C.

To summarize: this version of liburg contains a single liburg.a and
liburg.so and it is a C library meant for use in a Linux environment
(mainly, Debian and Mandriva). Programs using the URG API now only need
link with liburg, i.e., -lurg flag to the linker. The header files
contain the extern "C" incantation for use with C++. However,
higher-level abstractions must be custom-built on top of the plain C API
provided in this version of liburg.

Building liburg
---------------
Ought to be a pretty standard GNU AutoTools procedure:

      ./configure
      make
      make install

Disclaimer
----------
This software is intended to procure distance measurements from a Hokuyo
laser range finder connected to a USB/serial port. However, it could
potentially cause the laser signal to go haywire, which could result in
the device shooting high-energy laser beams that melt flesh and,
eventually, destroy the world.

It could also result in something much less dramatic such as data loss
and other such annoying side-effects. If in doubt, please don't use it.

In short: neither Manu Viswanathan nor iLab provide any guarantees of
any kind or accept any responsibility whatsoever. Use this software at
your own risk.
