The TurtleBot2 robot is a popular open source robotics research platform. The platform officially supports a Netbook laptop as the main computer for the robot, however, driving around with a laptop on the robot can be cumbersome. It is better to integrate a single board computer with the robot platform to allow the robot to…Read more Autonomous robot hardware setup
Robotics
Setting up ROS with Python 3 and OpenCV
The Robot Operating System (ROS) does not currently work out-of-the-box with Python 3. ROS officially supports Python 2.7 and ROS 2 supports Python 3 natively. Since Python 2.7 support is now deprecated, and most robots in 2020 still use ROS (not ROS 2), it becomes neccessary to set up Python 3 with ROS in order…Read more Setting up ROS with Python 3 and OpenCV
Consistent USB sensor device naming
Popular robotics sensors such as the Hokuyo laser range finder have a USB interface. Plugging in the sensor will normally cause Ubuntu to set up USB communication via the /dev/ttyACM0 port which allows the sensor to interface with the OS, provided the correct permissions are set. The official hokuyo_node ROS package recommends using the following …Read more Consistent USB sensor device naming
Converting the KITTI dataset to rosbags
The KITTI Vision Benchmark Suite dataset is a popular robotics dataset from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago. Several benchmarking datasets are provided including stereo, flow, scene flow, depth, odomerty, object, tracking, road, semantics and the raw data. To use this dataset in ROS, the streams should first be converted to…Read more Converting the KITTI dataset to rosbags
3D Computer Vision in ROS
The RealSense D435 camera can be readily set up to publish all the image and pointcloud streams via ROS topics. For an in-depth setup, read Integrating the Intel RealSense D435 with ROS. Once this data becomes available in ROS, processing it via custom nodes requires a larger ROS ecosystem for perception. Three popular 2D/3D computer…Read more 3D Computer Vision in ROS
Integrating the Hokuyo URG Lidar with ROS
The Hukuyo URG is a lightweight, affordable USB powered lidar sensor. It outputs a single planar scan with 240º scanning range at 0.36º angular resolution and scan rate of 100ms/scan. This sensor can be used for, amongst other things, indoor mapping or collision avoidance. There is presently no pre-compiled driver available for ROS kinetic so…Read more Integrating the Hokuyo URG Lidar with ROS
Integrating the Intel RealSense D435 with ROS
The Intel RealSense D435 is the latest RGBD camera available from Intel, and is an upgrade from the Intel R200 camera already discussed in a previous post. The D435 is a stereo depth camera that is designed to work both indoors and outdoors. The 3D reconstruction is constructed using active Infrared (IR) stereo. The camera is…Read more Integrating the Intel RealSense D435 with ROS
Step-by-step setup of a new laptop for robotics
Setting up a new laptop for robotics can be time consuming. This post will focus on using the Dell Alienware 15 R4 laptop. With its Intel i9 processor and Nvidia GTX 1080 graphics card, it's the perfect laptop for robotics or computer vision projects. Setting up the laptop comprises of two main steps: installing Ubuntu…Read more Step-by-step setup of a new laptop for robotics
Troubleshooting: Rosbuild to Catkin migration
Migrating from Rosbuild to Catkin can be accomplished using the ros-industrial catkinize script as described in Quickly migrating from Rosbuild to Catkin. Although this script attempts to replace rosbuild commands with catkin ones, some errors arise when compiling using the catkin_make command. This troubleshooting guide covers steps to take after catkinizing a package. Update messages…Read more Troubleshooting: Rosbuild to Catkin migration
Quickly migrating from Rosbuild to Catkin
ROS uses CMake, a powerful cross-platform build tool, at its core. Rosbuild and Catkin are ROS scripts for managing the CMake-based build system for ROS. Catkin is the newer, preferred option. ROS packages that are build using Rosbuild do not work in a Catkin workspace thus it becomes necessary to migrate from Rosbuild to Catkin.…Read more Quickly migrating from Rosbuild to Catkin
