Robot Navigation with Eddie Robot and ROS

This is Hafiq’s BSc final year project. In this project, we implemented the ROS navigation stack on the Eddie robot platform. We replaced the controller with a Raspberry Pi and a laptop. We learned to setup the Robot Operating System (ROS), implement the navigation stack, configure and write the necessary transformation, odometry and motor control nodes specific to the Eddie robot.

The Eddie robot will serve as the mobile platform for our other high-level applications and research works on personal robots. The mobile platform has the ability to autonomously build the map of its surrounding, localize itself within the map and navigate around safely without bumping into obstacles.

We have added a tall body to the Eddie robot to fix a Kinect sensor on it. The Kinect sensor serves to provide the visual perception to the robot. The Kinect also serves as the laserscan input to the navigation stack. The controller of the Eddie robot has been replaced with a Raspberry Pi and a laptop. The two computers communicate through direct LAN connection between them. Most of the ROS nodes are run in the laptop, while the Raspberry Pi runs the nodes dealing with the drive train (motors and odometry).

People

• Noorsyamimi binti Haji Abdur Ajak
• Hafiq Anas
• Ong Wee Hong

Data/Codes

• ROS Eddie Navigation Robot: https://github.com/ailabspace/ros-eddie-navigation-robot

Publications

• Hafiq Anas, Wee Hong Ong, “An implementation of ROS Autonomous Navigation on Parallax Eddie platform”, arXiv preprint (2021) https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.12571 (pdf)

Media

Note: The video has been speedup by about x2.5. The scene is outside the Laboratory of Robotics and Intelligent System (Robolab V3) in the Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD).