Tag Archives: SLAM

aMoSeRo – first robot_pose_ekf and gmapping

This surely doesn’t look amazing from a external look – but this has been a day of hard work and was very important.

The robot_pose_ekf package is working! It is neither the setup I am going to use nor is it very stable – but it proves some points.

First I needed to write my own IMU driver for ros – 9 degrees of freedom (DOF) for 30€ and a bag of problems. This is a lot cheaper (around 100€) than the often used Razor IMU of sparkfun with existing ROS code, and exactly 3DOF better than the WiiMote (with Motion+ and also about 60-70€) I have been experimenting with. There is still a lot of work left for improving the stability, the calibration of the LSM9DS0 and there has been a lot more to find out about magnetic fields and strange units that needed to be converted in other ones than I would have ever expected – but so far the /imu_data topic serves some not totally wrong data – therefore normalisation minimizes  the issues with the 3-5 scales per axis I had to deal with.

Next I needed to increase my bad odometry sources – if not by quality at least with quantity – and added a GPS sensor as /vo topic.  The CubieTruck is a abstruse while handling some easy things like using one of the possible 8 UART connections…  for today I’ve not managed to get it running with UART but a external serial usb controller. Another area that needs heavy improvement…

Finally I had to deal with the REP105 issue that I have been describing in a previous post. The gmapping algorithm needed to get adjusted parameters, coming along with some serious confusion generated by inconsistent syncing over my 4 working devices (rosBrain with roscore and slamming, rosDev – my development machine, the aMoSeRo and the seafile backup server)…

…but after that all parts worked together for the first time, including a simulated aMoSeRo moving on screen while beeing hold in different angles in the real world.

Everything is still far from done – but right on the way – and we’ve already found out how wide the road is 🙂

aMoSeRo – first Simultaneous Planning Localization and Mapping (SPLAM)

Far from done, but right on the way – the aMoSeRo did his first 2D planning today.  There are still a lot of adjustments needed for the mapping to work properly, but it’s already impressive to see ROS working.

first SPLAM - first navigation through a map

first SPLAM – first navigation through a map

The node graph still grows and will need some changes when used with multiple robots, but organising goes on 🙂

first SPLAM - it is getting even worse, more topics, more nodes

aMoSeRo – very first mapping view available

After days with latex and struggling with all sensor data a mobile robot needs, today is the first day of ROS showing me a small map view. It’s anything but stable and I can’t claim understanding everything – but because I’ve hadn’t something to report for some time now here a small demonstration:

First Mapping Experience

Screenshot fromMAP

ScreenshotTopics Topics Overview – amosero a distributed system still far from optimal

Because my IMU doesn’t do its work as it should, I’ve used a WiiMote Motion + and run it by a common ros driver and bluetooth.

Yeeeha 🙂