AAU rover - Software for the physical system

Repository for the ROS software that runs on the AAU mars rover. This version of the system runs on a NVIDIA Xavier, using Ubuntu 20.04, jetpack 5.0 and ROS Foxy.

Launching the rover

To launch the package, follow these steps:

1. Start the rover

• Orin: Press the "ORIN" button to turn on the computer.
• Motors: Press the "MOTORS" button to turn on the motors.
• Connection: Connect too the Orin through ssh or the onboard router: TODO, add ip of the orin

2. Start the ROS package

# Clone repo
git clone https://github.com/abmoRobotics/isaac_rover_physical_2.0
cd isaac_rover_physical_2.0

# Build and source
source /opt/ros/foxy/setup.bash
colcon build
source install/setup.bash

# Launch the package
ros2 launch command: ros2 launch controller controller.launch.py

Joystick control

The joystick used is the Logitech F710.

1. By default the robot is driven in automatic mode. Click Y to enable the joystick and set the manual mode the robot can be controlled by using the left stick.
2. Select the maximum speed by using the cross.
3. To drive the robot in any direction move the left stick and graduate the current speed using LT. Note: The cross can be clicked at any time to change the maximum speed.
4. To make the robot rotate on itself push the left stick to the sides
5. To disable turning mode click B.
6. To enable automatic robot drive click X or A.
7. Prees LB to power off the motors (TRY TO AVOID TURNING OFF THE MOTORS WHILE DRIVING, TO NOT DAMAGE THE ROVER).

The code for the joystick can be found here: joystick.py

Additional Documentation

1. Motor controllers:

Nanotech controllers C5-E-2-09: link to motor controllers

The CAN bus is set up with the following guide to controle the motors: Enabling CAN on Nvidia Jetson Xavier Developer Kit. Remember that to check if the GPIO on the Xavior is the same as on the Orin, there might be some small adjustments. Doc to 34.1.1 and to 35.1 GA.

• All the motors is setup useing the Nanotech Autosetup, and should NOT be changed! If doing autosetup, REMEMBER to do it without load.

• The code for controlling the motors can be forund here: motor.py the way the motors is controlled is thru SDO, other solutions do exist.

• Kinematic ( Ackermann steering ) Kinematics.py

2. NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin Developer Kit (Issues)

The NVIDIA ORIN has some minor things that do not work:

1. DO NOT CONNECT A DP TO HDMI CONVERTET TO MONITOR UNTIL YOU HAVE READ THIS!!! Orin AGX Display not working

2. The ZED2i camera is not well integrated into the code, so the cameras PointCloud might be slow when processing high resolution.

3. Remote interface

To enable the remote interface, open the joystick node and set the ENABLE_REMOTE_INTERFACE boolean . If this is enabled and the node starts, you will not be able to control the rover using the joystick until the client connected to the rover.

NOTE: The remote device needs to connect to the rovers wifi (power on router and use default credentials).

Put the client python file on your client PC and execute it after the rover was started and all motor controllers have been initialized. If the connection is successfull you will get a console output and after a few seconds you will recive the videostream from the rover. The currently low framerate is caused by the fact that we only send frames when we also get a pointcloud. This can be changed, but be aware of potential conflicts on the data bus if decoupled from point cloud procedure.

NOTE: in the current implementation the joystick node will crash if the remote device loses connection to the rover.