robotont_driver

Hardware driver for the Robotont robot

README

robotont_driver

ROS driver package for robotont.

This package handles low-level communication between ROS and robotont hardware.

CI License

1. Installing and starting the driver from ROS distro

1. Ensure Your System’s Distribution is Supported. ROS 2 Humble supports Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy)

2. Install ROS 2 Humble Installing ROS2 Humble

3. Install robotont driver

 sudo apt install ros-humble-robotont-driver

4. Source install files and start the driver using the launch configuration

source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash
ros2 launch robotont_driver driver_launch.py

Launch parameters are defined in 3 different places. With the following hierarchy (lower number overwrites higher number):

  • 1: The parameters defined in the parameters file

  • 2: The parameters specified via command line, when using the launch file

  • 3: The parameters hardcoded in the driver code

To change the launch parameters once, they can also be specified via the command line:

ros2 launch robotont_driver driver_launch.py device_name:='/dev/ttyACM0'

2. Installing and starting the driver using source code

1. Ensure Your System’s Distribution is Supported. ROS 2 Humble supports Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy)

2. Install ROS 2 Humble and create a workspace Creating a workspace

3. Pull driver repo and install ROS dependencies

Navigate to workspace root folder

sudo rosdep init
rosdep update
rosdep install --from-paths src -y --ignore-src

The driver also relies on the following packages:

  • 1: io-context

  • 2: serial-driver

  • 3: asio-cmake-module

sudo apt install ros-humble-io-context ros-humble-serial-driver ros-humble-asio-cmake-module

4. Build the driver

Ensure you are in your workspace root folder and enter the following commands to install them:

colcon build

5. Source install files and start the driver using the launch configuration

source install/local_setup.bash
ros2 launch robotont_driver driver_launch.py

Launch parameters are defined in 3 different places. With the following hierarchy (lower number overwrites higher number):

  • 1: The parameters defined in the parameters file

  • 2: The parameters specified via command line, when using the launch file

  • 3: The parameters hardcoded in the driver code

To change the launch parameters once, they can also be specified via the command line:

ros2 launch robotont_driver driver_launch.py device_name:='/dev/ttyACM0'

3. Moving the robot

The drivers for the simulated and the real robot both subscribe to a cmd_vel topic. To move the robot, we have to publish velocity messages to this exact topic.

Here we use the teleop_twist_keyboard node, which translates command line keypresses to velocity messages and published these by default on cmd_vel topic. Run the node

ros2 run teleop_twist_keyboard teleop_twist_keyboard

  • Follow the printout in the console to learn how to control the robot. Enjoy the ride!

4. Available plugins

plugin_odom

This plugin receives the ODOM packet from the robot and publishes the data on /odom (<nav_msgs::Odometry>) topic. This plugin also broadcasts an odom frame via TF.

plugin_motor

This plugin subscribes to cmd_vel topic and relays the velocities to robotont’s motors