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Starting Up Mini Maxwell
Description: This tutorial guides you step by step through starting the Mini Maxwell robotTutorial Level: BEGINNER
Next Tutorial: Using the Buttons
Contents
Quickstart
Powering on Mini Maxwell
- Power on the laptop
- Plug in the Create
- Plug in the ArbotiX
- Push the power button on the Create, you should hear a single beep.
Start a roscore
Open a terminal window, and start roscore within it:
roscore
Launch Mini Maxwell
CTRL-SHIFT-T will get you another tab within the terminal program, in which you can run:
roslaunch mini_max_defs bringup.launch
Stopping the Robot
When you are done, you can type CTRL-C into each of your terminal windows. The roscore should be the last one shut down. After the launch file has finished, it is safe to unplug the USB adapters.
Under the Hood
If you open the bringup.launch file in a text editor, you'll notice that is an XML file specifying a number of programs (nodes) to start. The key ones are:
turtlebot_node - The turtlebot is a robot built atop of the iRobot Create. Mini Maxwell is very similar to a TurtleBot, and even uses the base drivers. This node controls driving the robot around.
arbotix - Unlike the TurtleBot, Mini Maxwell has an actuated head and a 5-DOF arm. The servos that make up these devices are controlled by an arbotix.
- kinect - The Kinect is a camera and depth sensor. We'll discuss this more in later tutorials.
- diagnostics, etc - We also launch a laptop_battery monitor and tools to handle diagnostics reporting.
