Mobile robotics
Mobile robotics focuses on the development of robots that are capable of moving in their environment. This field of robotics covers robots that operate in aerial, maritime and land domains. Although different domains require robots with different characteristics, all developers of mobile robots face similar challenges: the design of interfaces to operate the robots, the monitoring of the robot and information retrieval, and the planning of safe trajectories that can drive the robots from one place to another.
In these practical session you will develop software to address these common challenges. In particular, you will operate a middle-sized wheeled robot. By the end of these practical sessions, you will be able to identify and propose solutions to address common tasks with ground mobile robots.
During this part of the course: you will develop the software using the Robot Operating System (ROS)—a set of software libraries and tools devoted to the development of robots; you will run simulations in Gazebo—a free and open-source 3D simulator for robotics; you will address common tasks for mobile robots using the robot Summit-XL—a multi-purpose wheeled robot; and you will produce control software for the robot using Python.
Although you will use ROS libraries and tools in the practical sessions, you will not require deep knowledge on this set of libraries. In all of the sessions, you will be given with pre-produced scripts that will handle the ROS libraries for you.
This part of the course covers three aspects of the operation of mobile robots and one project on the topic:
In sessions P1.1 to P1.3, you will be given scenarios that will require you to interact with the robot under different operation conditions. Your task will be to develop the software to successfully operate the robot.
In session P1.4, you will be given with a mission to be performed with a team of two robots. Your task will be to conceive and implement a strategy to operate the two robots and perform the mission.
The course is planned in a progressive manner—that is, the code that you develop in a practical session might be required in a following one.
Evaluation
The practical sessions on mobile robotics will be evaluated with the project that you will develop in the session (P1.4).
Resources
In the left panel you find quick access links to the resources you will mostly use during this part of the course: an overview the Summit-XL robot, and the command lines to interact with it using the terminal; a short introduction to programming with Python; and the ROS documentation and forums.
Further readings
The following reading is a recent literature review on mobile robotics.