Warehouse demo

The series of micro-ROS real-life demos have proven yet the maturity and efficiency of the micro-ROS framework. The warehouse demo is no exception to it.

This page describes the general set up at first. Then the focus will be moved toward the sensor configuration and additional work. finally a demonstration will showed.

Mission description

In this demonstration, a robot will be accomplishing different tasks. Those tasks consists in harvesting data and activate different elements located at different position within a given warehouse . The goal is to demonstrate that the micro-ROS is able to integrate and perform great into every eco-system (hardware and software).

Two tasks are described below in a form of two different state machines. There were generated by the smach-viewer tool https://github.com/amx-piap/executive_smach_visualization

Mission 1:

Mission 2:

Set-up

In this set-up the different actors playing are:

• A robot platform with an Intel NUC (x86 computer) platform

• A laptop that will monitor the robot

• Different sensors that are:

  • A temperature and humidity sensor
  • A Door actuator and its status
  • A distance measurement provider,
  • A final effector which is a light to switch on.

The robot communication interfaces are

• A Wireless network communication between a laptop and the robot.
• A Low power wireless hardware, the 6LoWPAN atusb will be used.

It goes without saying that there are more communication mediums, such as, the indoor positioning, CAN bus and ethernet bus. But these elements are complex and dealing with them goes beyond the scope of this document.

Tool and environnement map map

The robot platform under use, is heavily tied for the ROS1 part for the following elements:

• SMACH: State machine ROS task executor
• Autonomy module and other related module: Using some private package as well as the ROS
• Different ROS module needed for positioning and obstacle detection.

Even though it is possible, porting the above-mentioned modules would be too much overhead. So instead, ROS1/2 bridge was added so that all messages from ROS1 are forwarded to ROS2 and vice-versa.

Below a picture picturing the software map:

Setting up the robot platform

1. The robot platform will be running using ROS1 noetic. The following link should be read:

   • ROS 1 installation http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Installation
   • ROS 1 usage http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Tutorials

2. Install the ROS 1 package uros_controller as following. Beware that the waypoints are set according to the Lukasiewicz-PIAP's warehouse. Modifications should be done to one's usage.

3. Additionally to ROS1, ROS2 foxy shall be installed and run as explained below:

   • Installation of ROS 2https://index.ros.org/doc/ros2/Installation/#installationguide
   • ROS 2 usage https://index.ros.org/doc/ros2/Tutorials/

Setting up monitoring laptop (Optional)

The different element for monitoring the robot platform:

• On the laptop, only ROS1 has to be installed as in the first point of the robot platform setup,
• The RVIZ package can be used as a monitoring software, more info: http://wiki.ros.org/rviz

Setting up the sensors

Environment set up using docker

Download the micro-ROS base Foxy image from the Docker Hub, then run a docker container.

sudo docker pull microros/base:foxy
sudo docker run -it --net=host --privileged -v /dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb microros/base:foxy

Create a ROS 2 workspace in the uros_ws folder of the docker container and build the package.

source /opt/ros/$ROS_DISTRO/setup.bash
git clone -b $ROS_DISTRO https://github.com/micro-ROS/micro_ros_setup.git src/micro_ros_setup
apt update && rosdep update
rosdep install --from-path src --ignore-src -y
apt-get install python3-pip
apt-get -y install python3-pip
colcon build
source install/local_setup.bash

Create the Nuttx firmware on Olimex-E407 with user case sensor applications.

ros2 run micro_ros_setup create_firmware_ws.sh nuttx olimex-stm32-e407
cd firmware/NuttX
git checkout -t origin/ucs_demo_f
cd ../apps
git checkout -t origin/ucs_demo_f
cd ..

Configure NUTTX tools to be able using the menuconfig application.

git clone https://bitbucket.org/nuttx/tools.git firmware/tools
cd firmware/tools/kconfig-frontends
./configure
autoreconf -f -i 
make
make install
ldconfig
cd -

Install additional applications

apt update
apt install -y genromfs vim

Complete configuration with micro-ros DEMO BOX messages and the convenient config file for flashing firmware,

git clone https://github.com/micro-ROS/nuttx_apps.git ./tmp
cp -r ./tmp/examples/ucs_* ./firmware/mcu_ws/
<del>git clone http://10.0.9.18/abratek/uros-ucs.git ./tmp </del>
<del>cp -r ./tmp/uros_demo/ ./firmware/mcu_ws/uros_demo </del>
cp ./tmp/config_f/flash_dashing.sh ./install/micro_ros_setup/config/nuttx/generic/flash.sh 
rm -rf tmp/

Building the laser distance application

Set the config profile variable to select the TFMini distance application.

CFG_PROFILE=ucs_distance_romfs

Follow up the building and flashing procedure

Building the humidity sensor application

Set the config profile variable to select the Hih6130 humidity application.

CFG_PROFILE=ucs_hih6130_romfs

Follow up the building and flashing procedure

Building the door opener application

Set the config profile variable to select the door opener application.

CFG_PROFILE=ucs_opener_romfs

Follow up the building and flashing procedure

Building the Final Effector

Set the config profile variable to select the final effector application.

CFG_PROFILE=ucs_effector_romfs

Follow up the building and flashing procedure

Building and flashing an application firmware

Run the following commands in the micro-ROS workspace folder to get the config profile, prepare a startup script, then build and flash an application to the Olimex-E407 board.

cd /uros_ws/
ros2 run micro_ros_setup configure_firmware.sh $CFG_PROFILE
cp firmware/NuttX/configs/olimex-stm32-e407/$CFG_PROFILE/rcS.template firmware/apps/nshlib/rcS.template
cd firmware/apps/nshlib/
../../NuttX/tools/mkromfsimg.sh -nofat ../../NuttX/
cd /uros_ws/
ros2 run micro_ros_setup build_firmware.sh
ros2 run micro_ros_setup flash_firmware.sh

Run the sensors

Powering the sensors is enough for them to start their application.

Run the application on the robot platform

Finally, once everything is set-up, the coommand below should be executed:

1. The ROS1/ROS2/ ROS bridge shall be launched

. <ros-install-dir>/setup.bash
. <ros2-install-dir>/setup.bash
export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://localhost:11311
ros2 run ros1_bridge dynamic_bridge --bridge-all-2to1-topics 

2. Script to set-up the 6LoWPAN wpan_atusb.sh

3. Run the docker:

   • Installation of docker https://docs.docker.com/get-docker/
   • The agent execution: docker run -it --net=host --rm microros/micro-ros-agent:foxy udp4 --port 9999

4. Execute the SMACH state machine using the the ROS1 environment:

   • rosrun uros_controller smach_node_mission1.py for mission 1,
   • rosrun uros_controller smach_node_mission2.py for mission 2.

Run the monitoring application on the laptop

The application to execute the run should in on terminal,

. <ros-install-dir>/setup.bash
export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://IP_ADDR_ROBOT_PLATFORM:11311
rviz

and in another terminal:

. <ros-install-dir>/setup.bash
export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://IP_ADDR_ROBOT_PLATFORM:11311
rosrun smach_viewer smach_viewer.py

License

This repository is open-sourced under the Apache-2.0 license. See the LICENSE file for details.

For a list of other open-source components included in this repository, see the file 3rd-party-licenses.txt

Known Issues/Limitations

There are no known limitations.