In this tutorial you will be able to get the laser and odometry data from a Robulab robot published into ROS topics.

Setup

You must ensure to meet all the requirements listed in the section Setup in Testing Robulab‘s post.

Install

1. Create a fresh PhaROS image by executing in a terminal:

   $ pharos create newimage
   

2. Open the image. This will open Pharo IDE.

   $ rosrun newimage edit
   

3. For ease Proxy (de)activation and Process cleaning (stoping & terminating PhaROS nodes), we recommend you to install the CAR shortcuts workspace: open a workspace, copy&paste the following script, select it completely and Do-it:

   Gofer new smalltalkhubUser: 'PabloEstefo'
       project: 'ExperimentUtils';
       package: 'Experiment-Utils';
       load.
   (Smalltalk at: #EUWorkspace) open.
   

4. It will open a new workspace titled CAR Utils that will have the following shortcuts:

   • ProxySwitch on to activate HTTP proxy

   • ProxySwitch off to deactivate it

   • ProcessesCleaner clean to terminate all non-critical processes. This will terminate any PhaROS node running. It is useful when you edit some script and want to relaunch it.

5. Then install the required software for controlling Robulab robot by selecting and Do-it the following script on an empty workspace:

   Gofer it
       smalltalkhubUser: 'CAR'
       project: 'Robulab';
       configurationOf: 'PureROS';
       load.
   ((Smalltalk at: #ConfigurationOfPureROS) project version: #bleedingEdge) load: {'kompai'}.
   

Test

1. Start roscore: in a terminal execute

   $ roscore

2. Start the main script driver for Robulab1:

   1. On the CAR Utils workspace, select and Do-it ProxySwith off to deactivate HTTP Proxy

   2. Write in a workspace & Do-it the following script:

   PureROSKompai new scriptKompai1

   In case you are using the Kompai2 Robulab, launch the script scriptKompai2 instead.

3. Let’s see which topics are available. To do so, in a terminal execute:

   $ rostopic list

   and you should see

   /command_velocity
   /example/string
   /initialpose
   /kompai/scan
   /kompai2/pose
   /kompai2/trajectory/differential
   /orientation
   /rosout
   /rosout_agg
   

4. Ok, now we know that laser (/kompai/scan) and pose (/kompai2/pose) topics exist, let’s inspect the data the robot is publishing into those topics. First we will see pose data by executing:

   $ rostopic echo /kompai2/pose

   and you should see something like this:

   header:
     seq: 65593
     stamp:
       secs: 1407481583
       nsecs: 757790000
     frame_id: /map
   pose:
     position:
       x: 0.0
       y: 0.0
       z: 0.0
     orientation:
       x: 0.0
       y: 0.0
       z: 0.0
       w: 1.0
   ---
   

5. The same way, let’s inspect laser data by executing:

   $ rostopic echo /kompai/scan

   and you will see something like this:

   ---
   header:
     seq: 529
     stamp:
       secs: 1407331004
       nsecs: 244896000
     frame_id: /laser
   angle_min: -2.36492109299
   angle_max: 2.34746789932
   angle_increment: 0.0174532923847
   time_increment: 0.0
   scan_time: 0.0
   range_min: 0.170000001788
   range_max: 3.80999994278
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   intensities: []