Please ask about problems and questions regarding this tutorial on answers.ros.org. Don't forget to include in your question the link to this page, the versions of your OS & ROS, and also add appropriate tags.

iPhone Teleop With ROSARIA

Note, teleop_base was deprecated in ROS electric, so it cannot be used in Fuerte or later.

Robot teleoperation using teleop_base

ROSARIA listens for geometry_msgs/Twist messages at cmd_vel topic. teleop_base produces that type of robot controlling messages from keyboard or joystick input. We'll use teleop_base in this tutorial (resides in wg-ros-pkg), so we'll need to install it.

Getting teleop_base

teleop_base needs additional package from wg-ros-pkg, control_toolbox, and one form ros-pkg, joy. Here is a convenient wg_teleop.rosinstall file:

- svn:
    local-name: wg-ros-pkg/sandbox/teleop_base
    uri: https://code.ros.org/svn/wg-ros-pkg/branches/trunk_cturtle/sandbox/teleop_base
- svn:
    local-name: wg-ros-pkg/pr2_controllers/control_toolbox
    uri: https://code.ros.org/svn/wg-ros-pkg/stacks/pr2_controllers/branches/pr2_controllers-1.4/control_toolbox
- svn:
    local-name: ros-pkg/joystick_drivers/joy
    uri: https://code.ros.org/svn/ros-pkg/stacks/joystick_drivers/trunk/joy

From here, we simply add those packages to our repos-diamondback:

$ rosinstall ~/Code/ros/repos-diamondback wg_teleop.rosinstall

And then compile them:

$ rosmake teleop_base

Putting it all together

We prepared pioneer-joystick.launch file.

<launch>
  <node name="RosAria" pkg="ROSARIA" type="RosAria">
    <param name="port" value="/dev/ttyUSB0" />
  </node>
  <group ns="RosAria">
    <node name="RumblePad2" pkg="joy" type="joy_node">
      <remap from="joy" to="rumblepad" />
      <param name="dev" type="str" value="/dev/input/js2" />
    </node>
    <node pkg="joystick_remapper" type="joystick_remapper.py" name="logitech_to_ps3" >
      <remap from="joy_source" to="rumblepad" />
      <remap from="joy_dest" to="joy" />
      <param name="button_mapping" type="str" value="=" />
      <param name="axis_mapping" type="str" value="0 3 2 1 4 5" />
    </node>
    <node name="teleop_base" pkg="teleop_base" type="teleop_base" />
  </group>
</launch>

This rosaunch file is tailored for Logitech RumblePad2 and, in addition to above mentioned, also uses joystick_remapper package:

- svn:
    local-name: ua_drivers/joystick_remapper
    uri: http://ua-ros-pkg.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/arrg/ua_drivers/joystick_remapper

If you don't have RumblePad2 or don't need the remapping, simply delete that part of the launch file, and remove remapping from joy_node and launch.

$ roslaunch pioneer-joystick.launch

Using iPhone/iPad as a joystick

Approach described here uses accelerometer-simulator. Having accelerometer-simulator installed and running (sending data to your ROS machine) on your iOS device, you need to run pyoj node. Here is a convenient pioneer-iPhone.launch file.

<launch>
  <node name="RosAria" pkg="ROSARIA" type="RosAria">
    <param name="port" value="/dev/ttyS0" />
  </node>
  <group ns="RosAria">
    <node name="iPhone" pkg="pyoj" type="pyoj.py" />
    <node name="teleop_base" pkg="teleop_base" type="teleop_base" />
  </group>
</launch>

A demo is shown in the following YouTube video: