Today was spent mostly working on RViz and Gazebo. I was able to download some TurtleBot3 packages and used the provided code to test out the software and run some simulations. I followed a tutorial from Robotis.

Worlds, SLAM, Teleoperation

The main goal of today was to find out how RViz and Gazebo work in conjunction with each other. I first spent some time launching some of the different provided worlds. Then I ran the SLAM node and teleoperation node in two differnt terminals. The teleoperation command prompted Gazebo to open up and show the world and the robot (I used the Turtlebot burger for the simulation), while the SLAM node prompted RViz to open and display what it was seeing with the LiDAR through Gazebo.

INSERT SCREENSHOTS OF GAZEBO AND RVIZ

Through the teleoperation node I could control the turtlebot with my keyboard by adjusting its angular and linear velocity. As the robot moved around its simulated world, a map was being created in RViz. After moving the turtlebot around for a few minutes the LiDAR created an accurate map was made that I saved as a jpeg on my laptop.

It was a bit tough configuring the environments at first and making sure everything was properly installed. Every time I thought I could move onto the next step I found out that I was missing yet another package. However, once everything was downloaded the process for launching the three nodes was pretty straightforward– three simple commands and it is all up and running.

INSERT FINAL MAP

For the rest of the week I plan on learning more about the move_base node and then figuring out how to use the Pioneer 3 robot that is in the lab! One of my least favorite parts of starting any new project is getting all the packages downloaded onto my machine and figuring out their different versions and dependencies. Luckily, things are moving swiftly and a lot of progress was made this week!

I also feel like I am finally starting to understand ROS. Really, the only way to learn it is to just follow all of the tutorials from the absolute very beginning. It was defintely worth it to start with the most basic tutorials before jumping into RViz and Gazebo as they definitely require a bit of prerequisite ROS knowlege.

Summer