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From ROS prototype to production on Ubuntu Core
- dbcurtis 10y agoA bunch of us in the robot club are using Neato Botvac's and RasPi's. Significantly cheaper.
- sbierwagen 10y agoWhich ROS package are you using for the neato? I had a lot of fiddly compatibility issues with mikeferguson/neato_robot: https://bbot.org/blog/archives/2016/06/09/using_ros_with_the_neato_xv-11_in_the_year_2016/ https://bbot.org/blog/archives/2016/06/09/using_ros_with_the...
- dbcurtis 10y agoFergs' node is kind of old, and he's a bit busy being CTO at Fetch Robotics, so don't expect him to put a lot of bandwidth into updates. Ralph Gnauck's fork of Ferg's original node has been updated for D-series Botvacs and recently added support for ROS Kinetic. We are on Kinetic.
- kyrofa 10y agoIs it? Which one are you using? Walmart has the D80 for $499, which is about $50 more than the Kobuki.
- sbierwagen 10y agoI bought a used XV-11 for $179, but budget buying a replacement battery immediately (~$60) since any used robot vacuum is going to have a bad battery.
- dbcurtis 10y agoI'm using a D80, but they can be found for less. The D-series is much preferred, because the XV-11 has a lame USB driver and the LIDAR data chokes it. I didn't realize Kobuki's were that cheap.
- kyrofa 10y agoYeah, the Turtlebot 2 is significantly more expensive than just the Kobuki, as mentioned in the post. But you get more stuff, too.
- dharma1 10y agoWould be good to know how hackable this is. It's got SLAM http://www.gearbest.com/robot-vacuum/pp_440546.html http://www.gearbest.com/robot-vacuum/pp_440546.html
- dbcurtis 10y agoRidiculously hackable. Plug in a USB cable, open your favorite serial terminal, and type "help". There are Neato ROS nodes, and it isn't hard to hack around with other interfaces. edit: I should note that through the USB interface you get raw LIDAR data, but not access to the internal SLAM. The LIDAR itself is decent, 1 degree angular resolution, 5m indoor range (2+ m outdoors with a sunshade) and 2cm distance accuracy at 5m, 1mm distance resolution. I've given multiple XV-11's LIDAR-ectomies, (get dead robots off E-Bay) and as soon as it spins up you start getting data. A simple PID controller (or even an "I" controller) will get you spinning at 300 RPM +/- 1%, which will give you very good quality data. Easily done with Arduino or better.
- dhbx9 10y agoI use ROS heavily and also a core contributor but I personally I do not like using Ubuntu or Raspberry Pi's for it. However this is the first time I'm hearing of Ubuntu Core so maybe I'll give it a go. My preferred method is Gentoo Linux with an external build bot that updates the images etc.
- btown 10y agoThe video includes a lot more detail about what the commands actually look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6BkzfwOZbc&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6BkzfwOZbc&feature=youtu.be Another example of how the general trend towards containerization vs. automated installation is excellent for reliable deployment. For server software, I was in the Ansible camp for a long, long time until I tried my first Docker-based deploy and realized that a whole swath of uncertainty about "documentation notwithstanding, can I trust this to deploy given the current state of the deploy target" just disappeared. For robotics this is even more important, because unless you're building a drone swarm, robots aren't generally in a redundant self-adapting cluster :) Regarding why Ubuntu Core is a better fit than Docker for this, http://askubuntu.com/questions/808524/whats-the-main-difference-between-docker-and-snap http://askubuntu.com/questions/808524/whats-the-main-differe... seems to shed some light. You want your "container" to have full access to the (robotic) system but still benefit from immutable dependencies.