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The Turtlebot App Manager

Description: Getting to know the new app manager - pairing and concert modes.

Keywords: turtlebot

Tutorial Level: INTERMEDIATE

Next Tutorial: Turtlebot QT Pairing

Overview

Since hydro depracates the old app manager in favour of the rocon_app_platform with the goal of enabling a usable public interface for both interaction with your turtlebot.

The new interface with rocon_app_manager enables the following features on turtlebot:

• Pairing Mode : hook up with your turtlebot via user devices(an android phone/tablet, QT, web) using rocon_interactions and rocon_remocon

• Concert Mode : a compatible multi-robot mode that allows use of the robot as a retaskable agent.

• Capabilities to provide a portable, easy to use dependency layer underneath the robot applications.

Differences between hydro release and indigo app manager:

• Pairing is supported by default, but uses different launcher for concert mode.

• It utilises rocon_interactions to hook up with user interface.

• Now QT Remocon is supported.

App Manager Bringup

Launchers

# Launch standalone (not usable for concert modes)
> roslaunch turtlebot_bringup minimal.launch
# Launch as concert mode
> roslaunch turtlebot_bringup concert_client.launch

Managing Apps

# Starting an rapp
> rosservice call /app_manager/start_rapp rocon_apps/chirp [] []
# Stopping any rapp
> rosservice call /app_manager/stop_rapp

There are a few other topics and services provided by your app manager, feel free to explore! Refer to rocon_app_manager

Visualization Launchers

The app manager namespaces started applications so that conflicts won't arise later when running with multiple robots. This means that visualisation launchers are different for old style launchers (e.g. turtlebot_navigation launcher vs android make_a_map or navigation apps. Where there is launchers available, we have added the _app suffix to them, e.g.:

# For non-app managed launchers
> roslaunch turtlebot_rviz_launchers view_navigation.launch
# For app managed launchers
> roslaunch turtlebot_rviz_launchers view_navigation_app.launch

What is next?

The app manager enables to start/stop rapps with client applications. The following tutorials describe how to interact with rapp manager via GUI application.

• Turtlebot QT Pairing

• Rocon QT App manager

or return to TurtleBot main page.