vacuum_bot

Implementation of a Cleaning Robot on TurtleBot

Overview

This package uses Gazebo simulation of Turtlebot to implement a vacuum cleaning robot. It utilizes ROS navigation stack to drive the robot autonomously in a known map. The pattern it follows is given by a set of goals.
This system is capable of following a predefined pattern to clean the room and avoid obstacles in its surroundings while completing its task. At the end of its task, it will return to its Home Location and be ready for next use.

Description

Navigation Stack

Navigation stack takes in information from odometry, sensor streams, and a goal pose and outputs safe velocity commands that are sent to a mobile base.
For more information on Navigation Stack, see navigation

Node

This package contains a node named Clean which utilizes an implementation of ROS actionlib package. actionlib provides simple action specifications like goal, feedback, result in form of ROS actions.
For more information on actionlib, see actionlib

move_base

The move_base package provides an implementation of an action that, given a goal in the world, will attempt to reach it with a mobile base. We have used move_base_msgs for this implementation. move_base_msgs contains the messages used to communicate with move_base node.
For more information on move_base, see move_base

Mapping

The world was built in Gazebo and ROS gmapping package was used for creating the map. For more information, See Map Building

Personnel

This package is developed and maintained by Robotics Grduate Student Vaibhav Bhilare as a part of Fall 2017 term Final Project for course ENPM 808X, Software Development for Robotics at University of Maryland, College Park.

Disclaimer

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2017 Vaibhav Bhilare

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Dependencies

ROS

ROS should be installed on the system. This package is tested on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with ROS Kinetic Desktop-Full Distribution.
Installation Instructions can be found here.

catkin

catkin is a Low-level build system macros and infrastructure for ROS.
catkin is included by default when ROS is installed. It can also be installed with apt-get

$ sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-catkin

Gazebo

Gazebo was used to build the world and is required to visualize the demo. To launch the demo, Gazebo should be installed.
Installation instructions can be found here

rviz

rviz is used for displaying sensor data and state information from ROS. rviz is included by default when ROS Kinetic Desktop-Full is installed.

turtlebot simulation

To install Turtlebot simulation stack use following command:

$ sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-turtlebot-gazebo ros-kinetic-turtlebot-apps ros-kinetic-turtlebot-rviz-launchers

Package Dependency

• roscpp
• rospy
• actionlib
• actionlib_msgs
• geometry_msgs
• move_base_msgs
• std_msgs
• tf
• rostest
• turtlebot_gazebo

Solo Iterative Process (SIP)

This package was developed using Solo Iterative Process.
SIP Google sheet can be found here
Sprint Planning and Review notes can be found here

Known issues/bugs

Scaled Objects change shape when reloading a model in Gazebo.
Robot keeps rotating at one location rather than moving to the goal.
None

Build Instructions

Creating a catkin workspace

Create a catkin workspace using following instructions:

$ mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
$ cd ~/catkin_ws/
$ catkin_make

Running catkin_make command the first time in your workspace will create a CMakeLists.txt link in your 'src' folder. Before continuing source your new setup.*sh file:

$ source devel/setup.bash

Building the Package inside catkin workspace

Clone the package in src folder of catkin workspace using following commands:

$ cd ~/catkin_ws/src/
$ git clone https://github.com/VBot2410/vacuum_bot.git

Then build the package using following commands:

$ cd ~/catkin_ws/
$ catkin_make

Running The Demo

Open a terminal and run following commands:

$ cd ~/catkin_ws
$ source devel/setup.bash
$ roslaunch vacuum_bot vacuum_bot.launch

Rebuilding the map using gmapping

Though not a part of final deliverable, We have also added the script developed for gmapping using turtlebot navigation package.
Run following commands:

$ cd ~/catkin_ws
$ source devel/setup.bash
$ roslaunch vacuum_bot vacuum_bot_gmapping.launch

After running above commands, open a new terminal and run following command:

$ roslaunch turtlebot_teleop keyboard_teleop.launch

Drive the robot around to cover the full map. For more information, see turtlebot_navigation tutorial
After having a good map, open a new terminal and save the map to file using following command:

$ rosrun map_server map_saver -f /home/<username>/catkin_ws/src/vacuum_bot/map/hotel_room_map

Note: Do not close the gmapping launch until saving the map.

Recording Bag files and how to Enable/Disable Recording:

Running the demo launch command sets the record argument in launch file to false by default. To enable rebag recording, simply add record:=true to the launch command.
The new commands will be:

$ cd ~/catkin_ws
$ source devel/setup.bash
$ roslaunch vacuum_bot vacuum_bot.launch record:=true

This will generate a file named rosbag_recording.bag in results subdirectory.
To disable the recording, use the default argument or specify record:=false.

Inspecting the bag file

For inspecting the recorded rosbag file, run following commands:

$ cd ~/catkin_ws/src/vacuum_bot/results
$ rosbag info rosbag_recording.bag

Playing Back the bag file

To play the recorded bag file, use following instructions: In a terminal, type following command:

$ roscore

Open a new terminal and run following commands:

$ cd ~/catkin_ws/src/vacuum_bot/results
$ rosbag play rosbag_recording.bag

Open a new terminal and run following command:

$ rqt_console

This will open a rqt_console which will play all the messages recorded in the bag file while recording.

Testing

Tests for this package are written using rostest and gtest. To build the tests, run following commands:

$ cd ~/catkin_ws
$ source devel/setup.bash
$ catkin_make run_tests_vacuum_bot

To run the tests after building them in previous step, use following commands:

$ cd ~/catkin_ws
$ source devel/setup.bash
$ rostest vacuum_bot vacuum_bot_test.launch

Output shown will be similar to the following:

... logging to /home/viki/.ros/log/rostest-ubuntu-3056.log
[ROSUNIT] Outputting test results to /home/viki/.ros/test_results/vacuum_bot/rostest-launch_vacuum_bot_test.xml
testvacuum_bot_test ... ok

[ROSTEST]-----------------------------------------------------------------------

[vacuum_bot.rosunit-vacuum_bot_test/Server_Existance_Test][passed]
[vacuum_bot.rosunit-vacuum_bot_test/X_Test][passed]
[vacuum_bot.rosunit-vacuum_bot_test/Y_Test][passed]
[vacuum_bot.rosunit-vacuum_bot_test/Goal_Test][passed]
[vacuum_bot.rosunit-vacuum_bot_test/Goal_X_Test][passed]
[vacuum_bot.rosunit-vacuum_bot_test/Goal_Y_Test][passed]

SUMMARY
 * RESULT: SUCCESS
 * TESTS: 6
 * ERRORS: 0
 * FAILURES: 0

Project Presentation And Demo

Presentation Video with Gazebo demo can be found here

Gazebo Demo can be found here

RViz Demo can be found here

PowerPoint Presentation file can be found here