iri_ana_how_to
The Ana robot is based on a Pioneer 3 AT platform which has been updated with:
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Custom 250Wh motor battery from AMOPACK with monitoring electronics.
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Custom 500Wh payload battery from AMOPACK with monitoring electronics.
The expected autonomy of the robot is around 5 hours, and it can operate on its own with the embedded computer.
In addition to the standard Pioneer sensors (sonars and bumpers) the Ana robot provides:
All theses sensors are mainly used for navigation and mapping purposes.
The upper part of the robot provides additional sensors and computers to detect and track people in urban environments. These sensors include: *
and are placed on top of a custom pan&tilt platform.
A fully featured gazebo model is also provided to test the robot in simulation.
Robot description
Procedures
Here are the basic precedures to use the robot. Please follow them carefully whenever you need to use the robot.
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Startup, operation and shutdown:
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Battery management:
Dependencies
The required common dependencies for both the simulated and the real Ana robot are listed below:
To build the workspace, make sure to follow the installation instructions from each of the packages above.
In order to use the robot in simulation, the following dependencies are also required:
To use the simulator, make sure to follow the installation instructions from each of the packages above.
Install
All these ROS packages, and their dependencies, can be manually added to the ROS workspace. A simpler option is to use one of the rosinstall files provided with this repository:
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real_ana.rosinstall: all the necessary packages to set up the real robot.
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sim_ana.rosinstall: all the necessary packages to use the robot in simulation.
See the wstool documentation for more details on how to initialize the workspace and merge a rosinstall file with it.
How to use the real robot
The test.launch file in the iri_ana_bringup package can be used as an starting point to use the Ana robot. It sets up and launches all the necessary nodes to use the robot. The launch file accepts the following parameters:
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velodyne_config_file: (default: iri_ana_bringup/config/ana_velodyne_vlp16.yaml) set of parameters for the Velodyne PUCK sensor. Please check the iri_velodyne_lidar_bringup package for a more detailed description of the configuration parameters.
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velodyne_node_name: (default: front_laser) base name given to the velodyne related nodes.
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pioneer_config_file: (default: iri_ana_bringup/config/ana_pioneer.yaml) set of parameters for the Pioneer3 platform. Please check the iri_pioneer3_bringup package for a more detailed description of the configuration parameters.
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pioneer_node_name: (default: ana) base name given to the pioneer related nodes.
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output: (default: log) the desired output for all nodes. Possible values for this parameter are log and screen.