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P2 - Multi-goal Inspection Planning

The main task is to implement ROS modules for multi-goal multi-robot inspection planning based on the task T2b-dtspn.

Deadline January 5th, 23:59 PST
Points 10
Label in BRUTE P2
Evaluation Solution is evaluated by a demonstration to an instructor
Resources P2-data resource package


Assignment

Implement ROS nodes to solve the multi-goal multi-robot inspection planning task. The provided resource pack supports deployment using the STDR simulator. Moreover, an R-VIZ setup file is provided to visualize the robot knowledge of the environment using the messages published by the individual ROS nodes.


Robot Motion Constraints

The robot is constrained by its minimal velocity $$v_{min} = 1 \text{ ms}^{-1}$$ and minimal turning radius $$r_{min} = 0.5 \text{ m}.$$


Simulator

The simulator provides and processes the following inputs and outputs, respectively

Message type ROS Topic Description
Outputs Robot pose (nav_msgs/Odometry) /robot{i}/odom Robot pose provided by a simulator
Point cloud (sensor_msgs/PointCloud2 ) /goals Goals to be visited by the robots, where each point comprises the x, y, and radius fields
Inputs Velocity command (geometry_msgs/Twist ) /robot{i}/cmd_vel/dubins Velocities to drive the robot which are compliant to the Dubins vehicle model constraints, as specified in the Robot Motion Constraints section

subject to $$i \in {0,1,...,N-1}$$ where N is number of robots in the simulation. Thus, the velocity command topic for the first robot is /robot0/cmd_vel/dubins.


To run the STDR simulator

  1. launch the ROS node

roslaunch uir_multi_goal_tools uir_backend_multi_goal.launch [robot_n:=number_of_robots]
where the optional argument robot_n specifies the number of robots in the simulation.


RVIZ

The provided RVIZ setup file may be used to visualize the following topics

Message type Topic Description
Robot odometry (nav_msgs/Odometry) /robot{i}/odom Robot position and orientation provided by a simulator
Path (nav_msgs/Path) /robot{i}/path Dubins path to be followed by the robot
Occupancy map (nav_msgs/OccupancyGrid ) /gridmap Map of the robot surroundings (published by the simulation backend)
Marker array (visualization_msgs/MarkerArray ) /goals/neighborhoods Goal neighborhoods (published by the simulation backend)


Expected Behavior


Evaluation

A demonstration in STDR is evaluated by an instructor during the labs.


Suggested architecture


Path following module

The path following module drives a curvature constrained robot along a given path by publishing velocity commands. The followed path represents a tour of goal locations and should be followed indefinitely. Moreover, an individual instance of this node should be created for each of the robots.

Message type Topic
Inputs Path (nav_msgs/Path) /robot{i}/path Dubins path to be followed by the robot
Robot odometry (nav_msgs/Odometry) /robot{i}/odom Robot position and orientation provided by a simulator
Outputs Velocity command (geometry_msgs/Twist ) /robot{i}/cmd_vel/dubins Velocities to drive the robot which are compliant to the Dubins vehicle model constraints, as specified in the Robot Motion Constraints section

Note, commands that do not comply the robot motion constraints should be avoided, as they may lead to unpredictable behavior.
Assume that the command velocity issued as $$ \begin{aligned} &\text{linear}:\\ &\quad x: 1.0\\ &\quad y: 0.0\\ &\quad z: 0.0\\ &\text{angular}:\\ &\quad x: 0.0\\ &\quad y: 0.0\\ &\quad z: 2.0\\ \end{aligned} $$ corresponds to the robot moving with the forward velocity $$v = 1 \text{ ms}^{-1}$$ and turning with the turning radius $$r = 0.5 \text{ m}.$$


Goal clustering module

The goal clustering module assigns goals to the individual robots.

Message type Topic
Inputs Point cloud (sensor_msgs/PointCloud2 ) /goals Goals to be visited by the robots, where each point comprises the x, y, and radius fields
Robot odometry (nav_msgs/Odometry) /robot{i}/odom Robot position and orientation provided by a simulator
Outputs Point cloud (sensor_msgs/PointCloud2 ) /robot{i}/goals Goals to be visited by a robot, where each point comprises the x, y, and radius fields


Path planning module

The path planning module plans a closed loop path over goals assigned to a robot.

Message type Topic
Inputs Robot pose (nav_msgs/Odometry) /robot{i}/odom Robot pose provided by a simulator
Point cloud (sensor_msgs/PointCloud2 ) /robot{i}/goals Goals to be visited by a robot, where each point comprises the x, y, and radius fields
Outputs Path (nav_msgs/Path) /robot{i}/path Path followed by the robot

Use either the decoupled or Noon-Bean approach, or an appropriate combination based on the goals assigned to the robot.


Appendix


Setup and ROS Basics

To run the ROS nodes, it is strongly recommended to use either Ubuntu 16 with ROS Kinetic or Ubuntu 18 with ROS Melodic. Detailed installation instructions may be found on ROS web pages ROS Kinetic, ROS Melodic.

On the lab computers, ROS Kinetic is already preinstalled but two more libraries need to be installed before using it.

pip install rospkg
pip install netifaces
Moreover, it is necessary to source the main ROS setup script, which has to be done in each new terminal instance. Thus, it is recommended to add the following source command in your ~/.bashrc file
echo "source /opt/ros/kinetic/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
or alternatively when running ROS Meloding
echo "source /opt/ros/melodic/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc

Finally, on Ubuntu 16 the STDR simulator is installed using

sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-stdr-*
On Ubuntu 18, STDR has to be compiled from source, which can be found at https://github.com/stdr-simulator-ros-pkg/stdr_simulator.


ROS Basics

On Ubuntu 16 and 18 the ROS workspace is created as follows

cd ~/
mkdir rds_ws
mkdir rds_ws/src
cd rds_ws
catkin_make
 
# source the workspace
cd devel
devel_path=$(pwd)
echo "source $devel_path/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
source setup.bash
 
# Add new (custom) package to the workspace
cd ~/rds_ws/src                 # Go to src folder in your workspace.
ln -s [path to your package]    # Create symlink to your package (or place the whole package directly to src).
cd ~/rds_ws
catkin_make                     # Compile the workspace.
 
rospack list                    # Make sure that your pack is known. (Sometimes this is necessary to refresh ROS. ) 
                                # Now, you should be able to use the package within ROS (rosrun or roslaunch).
 
# useful commands
rostopic list              # all current topics in the ROS system
rostopic info [topic name] # show info about topic - publishers, subscribers
rostopic echo [topic name] # writes msgs data on certain topic to stdout
rostopic hz [topic name]   # prints frequency of msgs on a certain topic
 
rosnode list               # all currently running nodes
rosnode info [node name]   # info about the node: published topics, subscribed topics
 
# useful tools
rqt_graph                  # visualize connection between the nodes (might not be 100% accurate)
rviz                       # spatial visualization of the msgs
rosrun tf view_frames      # creates pdf with a visualization of the whole transformation tree (all the /tf msgs in the system) 
rosbag record              # capture ROS msgs on selected topics (data can be played with selected speed afterwards) 
rosbag play [bagfile]      # play data saved in bagfile

The main study material for ROS is http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Tutorials. A special attention should be given to ROS message-based communication presented in http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Tutorials/WritingPublisherSubscriber%28python%29.

courses/b4m36uir/projects/p2-data.txt · Last modified: 2019/11/18 18:30 by pragrmi1