Skip to content

Tutorials

NRottmann edited this page Aug 6, 2020 · 8 revisions

In this section, we present some tutorials which will show you how to get started with ROS-Mobile.

Table of Contents

Differential Drive Simulation

In this tutorial we will introduce the main functionalities of ROS-Mobile using a simulated differential drive robot.

Requirements:

  • A computer with Ubuntu 18.04 and ROS Melodic (can be also run onto a virtual machine)
  • A mobile device with Android as OS
  • A network connection between the computer and the mobile device
  • Internet connection

Preparations:

  • Install ROS-Mobile onto your mobile device. Instructions can be found here.
  • Download the simulation environment by following the instructions from here. You might need to add additional ROS packages listed here.
  • Make sure both, your computer and your mobile device, are connected via the same network.

Control the differential drive robot with the joystick node

  • Check the IP-Adress of your computer using
ifconfig
  • Open a terminal, set the ROS_Hostname correctly and start the simulation environment
export ROS_HOSTNAME=your_ip
cd ~/tutorial_ws
source devel/setup.bash
roslaunch simulation_environment apartment.launch
  • Connect to the running ROS master by inserting the computers IP-Address in the Master Tab and pushing the connect button. If the button turns into a disconnet button, you are connected!
  • Change to the Details Tab and hit the plus sign to add a joystick node. A list with details, including the Vis location, should appear. Here we can define the location and width of ourr joystick in the Viz Tab as well as the projection to the Twist message. Define the size and location of the joystick such that it suits you (e.g. x=0, y=0, width=6, height=6) and set the projection of the x-axis to (angular,z) and the projection of the y-axis to (linear,x). Make sure that the topic name for the publisher is cmd_vel.
  • Change to the Viz Tab. By moving the joystick around you send messages via the cmd_vel topic to the ROS system. The differential drive robot will react.

Differential Drive Robot (still in work)

In this tutorial, we show you how to build and setup a differential drive robot operated by ROS and controlled by our ROS-Mobile application. The tutorial is divided into three steps: Building the robot, setting up the control unit (we use a Raspberry Pi) and programming your ROS programm. We highly recommend that you start first by doing the ROS-Gazebo tutorial.

Required Hardware Components

  • Raspberry Pi (e.g. the 3B+ version) with 32 GB micro SD
  • ...

Hardware Setup

TBD

Raspberry Pi Configuration

A tutorial for configure our Raspberry Pi can be found here.

ROS Packages

TBD