This paper proposes the author's design of a mobile robot intended for creating a two-dimensional map of the environment. The first part of the paper describes the scope of automated systems called ...robots. On this basis, the design assumptions of the author's robot were defined, the components used in the construction are shown, the operation of the Robot Operating System (ROS) and the packages used in this robot control system are presented. The main idea, which was to govern the project was its low manufacturing cost. Thus, the use of the optical system of the Kinect device. As a result. the operation of the algorithm controlling the robot via the ATmega328 microcontroller is demonstrated. The results of the experimental verification of the robot's performance are presented in the form of two-dimensional maps of the rooms in which the experiments were carried out.
In this paper, a cloud-based mission control architecture is proposed to achieve flexible remote access and coordinated mission control among a fleet of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs). First, a ...cloud-based mission control architecture that renders easy, timely and prioritized remote access to the USVs regardless of the remote operator’s location is proposed. It is achieved by leveraging remote cloud-based technology and local Operating onboard System. Decentralized property of the architecture accomplishes scalable monitoring, remote control, data acquisition and missions sharing for an USV fleet. Second, the related software interfaces are required for this task: the user interface of the remote client that is used for mission control/planning and data visualization and that is applicable across mobile robotic systems; and the back-end interface for the local USVs that bridges robotic and cloud server and provides seamless integration with the well-established Robot Operating System (ROS). ROS is nowadays, the most widely used framework for robotics developments. Furthermore, the proposed cloud-based mission control architecture is implemented on a fleet of real vehicles, H2Omni-X USVs, and the performance of the remote experimentation is demonstrated during sea trials at the Adriatic coast, Croatia, representing the practical contribution of this paper.
•A large amount of ROS packages ends up being abandoned by their developers.•ROS package reuse is not as easy as promised: bugs and lack of basic documentation hamper reuse.•Members of the ROS ...ecosystem do not contribute because they lack time or confidence in their possible contribution.•We can improve the ROS ecosystem by identifying and predicting abandoned packages.•Recommender systems can be used to propose contribution opportunities to community members.
ROS, the Robot Operating System, offers a core set of software for operating robots that can be extended by creating or using existing packages, making it possible to write robotic software that can be reused on different hardware platforms. With thousands of packages available per stable distribution, encapsulating algorithms, sensor drivers, etc., it is the de facto middleware for robotics. Like any software ecosystem, ROS must evolve in order to keep meeting the requirements of its users. In practice, packages may end up being abandoned between releases: no one may be available to update a package, or newer packages offer similar functionality. As such, we wanted to identify and understand the evolution challenges faced by the ROS ecosystem. In this article, we report our findings after interviewing 19 ROS developers in depth, followed by a focus group (4 participants) and an online survey of 119 ROS community members. We specifically focused on the issues surrounding package reuse and how to contribute to existing packages. To conclude, we discuss the implications of our findings, and propose five recommendations for overcoming the identified issues, with the goal of improving the health of the ROS ecosystem.
We are conducting research and development of Hakoniwa, a virtual simulation environment in the age of IoT and cloud robotics. This research aims to deploy the core functionality of Hakoniwa for ...simulation of ROS 2 applications. The proposed method mainly consists of Docker and Unity, and allows engineers to easily try out robot development as many times as they wish on multiple platforms independent of OS environment.
This paper investigates the trajectory tracking control of an autonomous tracked vehicle. First, the desired linear and angular velocities are evaluated based on vehicle’s kinematics. An optimized ...backstepping controller is proposed as the kinematic controller, whereas the controller gains are optimally obtained. Next, an integral sliding mode control (SMC) is exploited based on vehicle dynamics and slipping characteristics, to obtain the desired torques that drive the vehicle and converge its trajectory to the desired one. Moreover, stability analysis of the whole system is proven based on Lyapunov theory. Finally, simulations and real-time experiments based on robot operating system (ROS) implementation are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm and compared with a hybrid backstepping-modified PID dynamic controller.
This study proposes an autonomous navigation system for hexapod robots, promising in complex rescue scenarios. The system is tested in simulations under three environments: rocky, cracked flooring, ...and inclined surfaces. utilizing light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), the robot recognizes positions and constructs environmental maps. Implemented via robot operating system, the research successfully applies navigation and mapping using hector_slam. LiDAR mapping yields satisfactory accuracy, with average errors of 0.21% for general mapping and 5.34% for circular paths. Within a 2-meter range, navigation achieves good accuracy, averaging 1.2% error on the x-axis and 0.011% on the y-axis during linear motion. Navigational repeatability improves, with reliable results showing an average error of 4.33 cm on the x-axis and 0.5 cm on the y-axis when returning to starting points. Arena testing with varied obstacles demonstrates successful obstacle traversal. However, in the second test, limitations in hardware, notably the Raspberry Pi 4 CPU usage reaching 97% during navigation, hindered reaching the third target.
This article proposes a general approach to solve the hand-eye calibration problem. The system is general since it is able to calibrate any number of cameras and, moreover, is able to simultaneously ...perform the calibration of several instances of the two common hand-eye calibration use cases: eye-on-hand and eye-to-base. The calibration is solved with a nonlinear least squares method, and the reprojection error is used as a metric to guide the optimization procedure. Our approach is seamlessly integrated with the robot operating system framework and allows for the interactive positioning of sensors and labeling of data, facilitating both the data acquisition and labeling and the calibration procedures. Results show that the proposed approach is able to handle any calibration use case with a minimal initial configuration. The approach is compared with several other state-of-the-art hand-eye calibration algorithms. Results show that the proposed approach produces very accurate calibrations when compared to the state of the art.
