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Only released in EOL distros:   fuerte

The TraxBot Robot

The TraxBot is a tracked mobile robotic platform developed in the Mobile Robotics Laboratory (MRL) at the Institute of Systems and Robotics (ISR) in the University of Coimbra, which has a differential drive system built upon the Traxster II Robot educational Kit extended with substantial components and improvements. The light and robust aluminum chassis is equipped with 2 DC gearhead motors on the front wheels, with quadrature wheel encoders. A flat acrylic structure was added on top of the platform to support a 10” notebook and the three ultrasonic range sonars, as presented.

The Traxbot is a low-cost robot based on open source tools, incorporating an Arduino Uno board as the control unit together with the OMNI-3MD motor driver, which are placed inside the robot chassis. Following this philosopy, the next step was, of course, to add ROS support. The battery pack is placed under the TraxBot and it also includes an Arduino compatible Xbee Shield which enables an easy-to-use Zigbee-based communication interface, enabling easy data exchange between multiple robots or between the robot and a remote unit when no Network infra-structure (i.e., WiFi) exists.

Sensors

The TraxBot is equipped with the following sensors:

• 3 Ultrasonic Range Finders Maxbotix MB1300;

Actuators

The TraxBot has the following actuators:

• Left and right wheel motors;
• RGB lights.

Processing

Hybrid processing system:

• Arduino Uno with ATmega 328p;

• ASUS eeePC 1001PXD.

Communication

Hybrid communication system:

• ZigBee;

• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n.

ROS API

traxbot_driverTest

traxbot_driverTest is a ROS driver for the custom mobile robot TraxBot.

Subscribed Topics

moveMotors (geometry_msgs/Point32)

• Velocity commands to the robot.

Published Topics

odometry (nav_msgs/Odometry)

• Odometry data from the robot.

batteryPower (std_msgs/Float32)

• Battery info from robot.

sonar_traxbot_front (std_msgs/Float32)

• Range data from the front sonar.

sonar_traxbot_left (std_msgs/Float32)

• Range data from the left sonar.

sonar_traxbot_right (std_msgs/Float32)

• Range data from the right sonar.

encoderRead1 (std_msgs/Int16)

• Data from encoder in motor 1 in pulses.

encoderRead2 (std_msgs/Int16)

• Data from encoder in motor 2 in pulses.

driverFirmware (std_msgs/Float32)

• Firmware version of motor driver OMNI-3MD.

traxbot_stageSimulation

traxbot_stageSimulation is a ROS alghoritm for perform simulatons with virtual TraxBot.

Subscribed Topics

base_scan (sensor_msgs/LaserScan)

• Data from virtual range laser.

odom (nav_msgs/Odometry)

• Odometry data from the virtual TraxBot.

Published Topics

cmd_vel (geometry_msgs/Twist)

• Velocity commands to the virtual TraxBot.

Tutorials

Coming soon...