Step 5: Navigation Full Stack#

Introduction to the Navigation Full Stack#

The Edge Insights for Autonomous Mobile Robots navigation full stack contains a lot of components that help the robot navigate, avoid obstacles, and map an area. For example:

  • Intel® RealSense™ camera node: receives input from the camera and publishes topics used by the vSLAM algorithm

  • Robot base node: receives input from the motor controller (for example, from wheel encoders) and sends commands to the motor controller to move the robot

  • ros-base-camera-tf: Uses static_transform_publisher to create transforms between base_link and camera_link

    static_transform_publisher publishes a static coordinate transform to tf using an x/y/z offset in meters and yaw/pitch/roll in radians. The period, in milliseconds, specifies how often to send a transform.

    • yaw = rotation on the x axis

    • pitch = rotation on the y axis

    • roll = rotation on the z axis

  • collab-slam: A Collaborative Visual SLAM Framework for Service Robots paper

  • FastMapping: an algorithm to create a 3D voxelmap of a robot’s surroundings, based on Intel® RealSense™ camera’s depth sensor data and provide the 2D map needed by the Navigation 2 stack

  • nav2: the navigation package

  • Wandering: demonstrates the combination of middleware, algorithms, and the ROS 2 navigation stack to move a robot around a room without hitting obstacles

In Edge Insights for Autonomous Mobile Robots, there two examples:

cd $CONTAINER_BASE_PATH
ls 01_docker_sdk_env/docker_compose/05_tutorials/aaeon_wandering__aaeon_realsense_collab_slam_fm_nav2.tutorial.yml
ls 01_docker_sdk_env/docker_compose/05_tutorials/pengo_wandering__kobuki_realsense_collab_slam_fm_nav2.tutorial.yml

One is for AAEON’s UP Xtreme i11 Robotic Kit, and the other is for Cogniteam’s Pengo robot.

Create a Parameter File for Your Robotic Kit#

To create a parameter file for your robotic kit:

cp 01_docker_sdk_env/docker_compose/05_tutorials/aaeon_wandering__aaeon_realsense_collab_slam_fm_nav2.tutorial.yml 01_docker_sdk_env/docker_compose/05_tutorials/generic_robot_wandering__aaeon_realsense_collab_slam_fm_nav2.tutorial.yml
# Replace generic_robot_nav to a name that makes sense to your robotic kit.
gedit 01_docker_sdk_env/docker_compose/05_tutorials/generic_robot_wandering__aaeon_realsense_collab_slam_fm_nav2.tutorial.yml
# you can also use any other preferred editor, it is important though to keep the path.

Make all of the changes that are specific to your robotic kit:

  1. Replace the aaeon-amr-interface target with the generic robot node you created in Step 3: Robot Base Node ROS 2 Node.

  2. Remove the ros-base-teleop target because this is specific to AAEON’s UP Xtreme i11 Robotic Kit.

  3. In the ROS 2 command file, change the Navigation 2 target so that params_file targets the parameter file you created in Step 4: Robot Base Node ROS 2 Navigation Parameter File.

    from: params_file:=${CONTAINER_BASE_PATH}/01_docker_sdk_env/artifacts/01_amr/amr_generic/param/aaeon_nav.param.yaml

    to: params_file:=${CONTAINER_BASE_PATH}/01_docker_sdk_env/artifacts/01_amr/amr_generic/param/generic_robot_nav.param.yaml

  4. In the ros-base-camera-tf target, change the transform values from static_transform_publisher. The values for x, y, and z depend on where your Intel® RealSense™ camera is set.

Start Mapping an Area with Your Robot#

  1. Place the robot in an area with multiple objects in it.

  2. Check that EI for AMR environment is set:

    echo $AMR_TUTORIALS
# should output the path to EI for AMR tutorials
/home/user/edge_insights_for_amr/Edge_Insights_for_Autonomous_Mobile_Robots_2023.1/AMR_containers/01_docker_sdk_env/docker_compose/05_tutorials

    If nothing is output, refer to Get Started Guide for Robots Step 5 for information on how to configure the environment.

  3. Start mapping the area:

    docker compose -f $AMR_TUTORIALS/generic_robot_wandering__aaeon_realsense_collab_slam_fm_nav2.tutorial.yml up

    Expected result: The robot starts wandering around the room and mapping the entire area.

  4. On a different terminal, prepare the environment to visualize the mapping and the robot using rviz2.

    Note

    If available, use a different development machine because rviz2 consumes a lot of resources that may interfere with the robot.

    # If using a different machine, set the same ROS_DOMAIN_ID as on the robot
#export ROS_DOMAIN_ID=42
docker compose -f $AMR_TUTORIALS/rviz_robot_wandering.yml up
    ../_images/aaeon_rviz2_options.png

  5. To see the map in 3D, check the MarkerArray:

    Note

    Displaying in 3D consumes a lot of system resources. Intel® recommends opening rviz2 on a development system. The development system needs to be in the same network and have the same ROS_DOMAIN_ID set.

    ../_images/aaeon_rviz2_3Doption_selected.png

  6. To stop the robot from mapping the area, do the following:

    • Type Ctrl-c in the terminal where the aaeon_wandering__aaeon_realsense_collab_slam_fm_nav2_ukf.tutorial.yml was run.

    • Use docker compose down to remove the containers:

    docker compose -f $AMR_TUTORIALS/generic_robot_wandering__aaeon_realsense_collab_slam_fm_nav2.tutorial.yml down --remove-orphans