This repository provides a demo of micro-ROS (and in particular its client library features) based on a Kobuki (Turtlebot 2) and an Olimex STM32-E407 board.
The basic idea and working principle is as follows: Instead of the typical laptop running ROS, the Kobuki is equipped with a STM32 F4 microcontroller only. This STM32 F4 runs the micro-ROS stack and a port of the thin_kobuki driver, which interacts with the robot's firmware (which runs on a built-in microcontroller). The STM32 F4 communicates the sensor data via DDS-XRCE to a remote laptop running a standard ROS 2 stack, the micro-ROS agent and rviz. At the same time, using the other direction of communication, the Kobuki can be remote-controlled.
In detail, this repository contains the following ROS 2 and micro-ROS packages:
- micro-ros_kobuki_demo_remote provides launch files to start teleop_twist_joy, rviz2, robot_state_publisher and the odom_to_tf node.
- micro-ros_kobuki_demo_robot-description provides the URDF and meshes and textures for the Kobuki as well as the Olimex board.
- The port of the thin_kobuki driver to micro-ROS is located in a separate repository at https://github.com/micro-ROS/apps/tree/demo/kobuki/examples/kobuki.
Technical information on these packages is given in the README.md files in the corresponding subfolders.
The software is not ready for production use. It has neither been developed nor tested for a specific use case. However, the license conditions of the applicable Open Source licenses allow you to adapt the software to your needs. Before using it in a safety relevant setting, make sure that the software fulfills your requirements and adjust it according to any applicable safety standards (e.g. ISO 26262).
Clone the repository into a ROS workspace and build it using colcon.
micro-ROS_kobuki_demo 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 micro-ROS_kobuki_demo, see the file 3rd-party-licenses.txt.
The colcon_test tool is used for quality assurances, which includes cpplint, uncrustify, flake8, xmllint and various other tools.
Please notice the following issues/limitations:
- Currently, the demo does not use the standard ROS 2 odometry message types but shorter types due to issues in the middleware.