IEEE2015

This is the code for the University of Florida's 2015 IEEE Robot. You need Ubuntu 14.04, and ROS Indigo. For some installation instructions, see github.com/uf-mil/getting_started

Description

Our robot has the following critical features:

• Holonomic drive
• SLAM-based navigation
• Arm IK
• Robust serial messaging interface for hardware control
• Visual-servoing for object manipulation
• AI for playing chess, as well as computer vision
• Simulations for
  • Gazebo: Full rigid-body simulation of the robot, including cameras and arm kinematics
  • XMega Sim: Simulated microcontroller USART via Socat so we can test both ends of our serial protocol on the bench
  • Arm Sim: 2D Fwd Kinematic arm simulation of the elbow and shoulder joints, also used for click-control
• A Diagnostic suite for testing and experimenting with individual components of the robot
• Hardware FDIR (Fault-detection, isolation, response)

Not yet implemented:

• AHRS (planar)
• Continuous integration, unit tests
• Software FDIR

To see some of our other robots code, check out github.com/uf-mil

Getting started

All of this is written for Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) and ROS Indigo (ros.org/install) - get the desktop-full version.

First, follow this tutorial for setting up git. Then follow the first three ROS tutorials, and make your catkin workspace.

A good linux tutorial is here

Once you make your catkin workspace (the ROS tutorials will teach you how to do this), go to the src folder, and clone this repository

cd ~/catkin_ws/src

git clone git@github.com:ufieeehw/IEEE2015.git

catkin_make ~/catkin_ws

Your directory structure should like like "~/catkin_ws/src/IEEE2015/ros/"

Simulators

To use the 2D Simulators/Visualizers, you need pygame sudo apt-get install python-pygame

If you want to use the 3D simulator, you need some Gazebo packages

sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-gazebo-ros-pkgs ros-indigo-ros-control ros-indigo-ros-controllers

Install Pre-Requisites

To get everything without any effort, do: sudo apt-get install aptitude

sudo aptitude install python-pip python-pygame python-scipy

sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-libuvc ros-indigo-libuvc-camera 

sudo pip install scikit-fmm

sudo pip install matplotlib --upgrade

mkdir ~/repos; cd ~/repos; git clone https://github.com/vispy/vispy.git; cd vispy; git checkout b64489ba2c639998d0ab4a1df36acb57ba41a8c1; sudo python setup.py install;

then run catkin_make -C ~/catkin_ws

mkdir ~/repos; cd ~/repos; git clone https://github.com/vispy/vispy.git; cd vispy; sudo python setup.py install

Setting Up Hardware

See IEEE2015/udev, follow the readme.

Or, in the udev folder just run sudo ./setup.sh

Git Best Practices

• When you commit something, the message should be of format "TOPIC: Verb action" - ex: "VISION: Add etch-a-sketch detection". This is important so that we can see a chronological list of commits and know what has caused changes

• Please include a readme.md with any new package. It should describe:

  • The topics it publishes to and listens to
  • A brief explanation of what the package does

• Commit ROS-ready code to the ROS directory under the appropriate package

• Commit non-ROS-ready code to the python, XMega or cpp directory as appropriate

• Only commit non-text files (Like pictures, 3D models, etc) if they are necessary to run or test your code!

• Commit everything, even if it's unfinished! The value of git is being able to track progress and see your code history

Th-th-th-that's all folks!

Coding Practices

• Simplicity is more important than speed

• Reliability and accuracy are more important than speed

• Uncommented code is as good as an empty file

• Use the metric units! Don't use imperial! No imperial!

• When publishing and subscribing to measured topics, ALWAYS SPECIFY UNITS AND A REFERENCE FRAME!

• Indent with 4 spaces