In 2019, I developed  a node in Python to tele-operate a 1-DOF on-off gripper by using Logitech gamepad. What I mean by 1-DOF on-off gripper is a gripper having just two binary states: attaching and detaching, or closed and open. This can be, for example, a magnetic gripper, a vacuum gripper, or a 1-DOF binary …

In 2019, I developed a node in C++ to tele-operate a UR robotic arm by using Logitech gamepad. I developed the node by modifying from teleop_ur node authored by Kevin Watts at Willow Garage, Inc. This node converts the joystick commands on /joy to commands to the UR arm. The tele-operation is performed at the …

According to the official documentation, the “explore_lite” package provides greedy frontier-based exploration. When the node is running, robot will greedily explore its environment until no frontiers could be found. Movement commands will be sent to move_base. A tutorial on using this package with Husarion’s Rosbot can be found here: https://husarion.com/tutorials/ros-tutorials/8-unknown-environment-exploration. In order to perform GMapping …

In another post, we perform GMapping SLAM while we tele-operate a robot. Now in this post we are going to perform GMapping autonomously. This is done by using frontier_exploration package. Here are some links about this approach: Original paper: http://www.robotfrontier.com/papers/cira97.pdf ROS Wiki page: http://wiki.ros.org/frontier_exploration Github link: https://github.com/paulbovbel/frontier_exploration Frontier exploration using Husky: https://www.clearpathrobotics.com/assets/guides/melodic/husky/HuskyFrontiers.html Frontier expolartion using …

GMapping is a commonly used SLAM package in ROS. Here are some steps to perform GMapping in ROS: Step 1: Create a package for this. Make a “launch” folder inside the package folder. Step 2: Create a launch file to run the “gmapping” node. Set the parameters of the “gmapping” node inside this launch file. …

A post on fusing the wheel odometry and IMU data using robot_localization package in ROS can be found here: Now we are going to add GPS data to the wheel odometry and IMU data. These three measurements are going to be fused by using robot_localization package. GPS provides the position of a robot with respect …

Accurate robot localization is very important for robot SLAM and navigation. Using only wheel odometry typically does not provide accurate localization of a mobile ground robot because of the uncertainty resulting from the wheels’ slip and drift. For this reason, it is quite common to fuse the wheel odometry data and the IMU data. In …

Navigation can be 2D or 3D. For a ground mobile robot, the navigation is typically 2D since the mobile robot does not have a degree of freedom in the vertical direction. Even for other types of mobile robots such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the navigation can be simplified to 2D. This is performed by …

Here are some steps to use MoveIt for your robot: Step 1: Make sure you meet the prerequisites, including: Having URDF of your robot Having ros_control and friends installed Having all required MoveIt packages installed Step 2: Run MoveIt Setup Assistant. This is a convenient GUI-based tool to setup the configuration of your MoveIt package. …

MoveIt (previously MoveIt!) is a very popular, and probably the most popular, ROS package for motion planning, particularly motion planning of manipulators. Although MoveIt is commonly used for manipulators, it is sometimes used for other robot types, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). For example: https://www.wilselby.com/research/ros-integration/3d-mapping-navigation/ and https://github.com/wilselby/ROS_quadrotor_simulator https://github.com/tahsinkose/hector-moveit https://www.theconstructsim.com/robotigniteacademy_learnros-3/ros-courses-library/ros-courses-programming-drones-ros/ The concept of MoveIt can be …