WheeledRobin

WheeledRobin is a two wheeled robot that balances on his wheels and is able to receive commands via the serial interface from a host computer. The robot was developed at the Institute for Robotics at Johannes Kepler University Linz. The commands are related to the SCI for the iRobot Roomba but are not fully compatible. The ROS interface of WheeledRobin is similar to the interface of TurtleBot. This allows to use many of the demos available for TurtleBot.

Installation (wstool from source)

By checking out from our repositories, you can always stay up to date with the latest version. Use the following commands to check out the WheeledRobin stacks:

1. Install ROS software (ROS Hydro with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is recommended) at http://www.ros.org/wiki/ROS/Installation, please select Ubuntu platform.

2. Use ros-hydro-desktop-full packages at the installation page (recommended)
3. Install turtlebot stack

   sudo apt-get install ros-hydro-turtlebot

4. Create a catkin workspace (see Catkin Tutorial)

5. Install wstool (if not already installed) (see wstool Tutorial)

6. Switch to catkin workspace into src folder

   cd ~/catkin_ws/src

7. Add WheeledRobin repositories

   wstool init
   wstool set wheeled_robin --git https://github.com/robinJKU/wheeled_robin.git
   wstool set wheeled_robin_apps --git https://github.com/robinJKU/wheeled_robin_apps.git
   wstool set wheeled_robin_simulator --git https://github.com/robinJKU/wheeled_robin_simulator.git
   wstool set wheeled_robin_viz --git https://github.com/robinJKU/wheeled_robin_viz.git
   wstool update

8. Build catkin workspace (see Catkin Tutorial)

   cd ..
   catkin_make

Getting Started

Bringup the real robot

To start the WheeledRobin robot power on the robot and type:

roslaunch wheeled_robin_bringup minimal.launch

The robot should make a beep that signals that the robot is ready to receive velocity commands. Proceed with starting nodes that supply velocity commands like teleoperation nodes.

Bringup a faked robot

To start a faked WheeledRobin robot that uses a faked perfect odometry (the robot is not simulated using physics) type:

roslaunch wheeled_robin_bringup minimal_fake.launch

Proceed with starting nodes that supply velocity commands like teleoperation nodes.

Bringup Kinect

To start the Kinect mounted in the head of WheeledRobin just type:

roslaunch wheeled_robin_bringup 3dsensor.launch

Bringup Visualisation

To run the visualization of WheeledRobin just type

roslaunch wheeled_robin_rviz_launchers view_robot.launch

on the base station (this command will not run on the robot itself as the robot does not provide any graphical capabilities).

Teleoperation

The WheeledRobin can be teleoperated like the TurtleBot. One can use the TurtleBot keyboard_teleop, joystick_teleop and the interactive_markers_teleop from the turtlebot_apps stack to command velocites to the robot.

The wheeled_robin_teleop package contains a launch file to operate the robot with a Thrustmaster T-Wireless gamepad.

Stack Overview

There are multiple stacks specific to the WheeledRobin:

Advanced Usage

Will follow