Services

Services are built-in software packages that make it easier to add complex capabilities such as motion planning or object detection to your machine.

In the following diagram, the machine is comprised of various hardware components including a GPS and a camera, and software (viam-server) running on a single-board computer. Some of that software is the low-level code that communicates directly with the hardware components, while some pieces of that software (the services) add higher-level functionality. In this case, the vision service is configured to run computer vision models on output from the camera component. The navigation service can take the raw output from the GPS component output and determine geographical location, and the data service captures data from any or all of the components, for example storing images from the camera.

Many built-in services run locally within viam-server, but you can think of them as discrete building blocks that you can mix and match however you want; you can run your machine using none, some, or all of them, depending on your use case. To use a given service, add it to your machine’s configuration.

Configuring services on your machine indicates to viam-server which software packages you want to use with your machine, and how to integrate that software with your components and other services. Services take many forms, so their configuration and usage varies widely. For example, when you configure data capture, you indicate which types of data you want to capture, from which components. When you configure the frame system, you indicate how the components relate to each other spatially. Find more information in the documentation for each service below.

Viam provides built-in support for the following service types. You can also add support for additional service types using modular resources.

Data Management

Capture data from machines, sync it to the cloud, and access it and train image classification and object detection models on the data.

Motion

The motion service enables your machine to plan and move its components relative to itself, other machines, and the world.

Frame System

The frame system holds reference frame information for the relative position of components in space.

Base Remote Control

The base remote control service allows you to remotely control a base with an input controller like a gamepad.

Machine Learning

Deploy Machine Learning models to a machine and use the vision service to detect or classify images or to create point clouds of identified objects.

Navigation

The navigation service uses GPS to autonomously navigate a rover to user-defined endpoints.

SLAM

Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) allows your machine to create a map of its surroundings and find its location within that map.

Computer Vision

The vision service enables your machine to use its on-board cameras to intelligently see and interpret the world around it.

Generic Service

A service that does not fit any of the other APIs.