Autonomous Driving Pipeline in ROS

Paper

Before adopting the pipeline for a singular purpose, we strongly recommend to read the article that explains our work in detail: Design and Implementation for Fully Autonomous Driving Systems. Paraplegic Patients Assistance [pdf] Download FILE

User Guide

Quick Start

First of all, we need to clone all the ./src folder inside a new ROS folder:

git clone https://github.com/cconejob/Autonomous_driving_pipeline.git

Once we have installed all dependencies (see section below), we need to build the devel and build folders by typing inside the Autonomous_driving_Pipeline folder:

catkin_make

If the command catkin_make fails, try executing it again and check if the percentage is growing.

In the same folder, type the following command before launching all packages.

source devel/setup.bash

If we need to change some parameters of the ROS structure, we can go to Loomo.launch inside the launch folder.

The Autonomous System used in our work is a Loomo Segway Robot. It needs some specific algorithms to enable the connection with the server (ROS pipeline), presented in https://github.com/cconejob/loomo-vita-testing-app.

Once everything is set up and adjusted to our specific context, we are ready to launch:

roslaunch loomo Loomo.launch

Structure

We present all the different pillars of the pipeline and a brief explanation of each one.

Autonomous Pipeline
│
│─── Loomo ───> Package which contains the launch file with all configurable parameters.
│
│─── Message Types ───> Package which includes all types of messages for topics.
│
│─── Perception ───> Package and node to perceive and detect from cameras and depth sensors.
│
│─── Estimation ───> Package to estimate current state from sensors information.
│       │
│       │─── Robot State ───> Node to estimate the state from IMU and GPS.
│       │
│       └─── Map State ───> Node to generate a map and estimate the state from all sensors.
│
│─── Prediction ───> Package and node to generate future positions (motion) for detections.
│
│─── Path Planning ───> Package and node to calculate robot's desired path to avoid collision.
│
│─── Control ───> Package and node to ensure that the robot is following the desired path.
│
└─── Visualization ───> Plotting tools for all nodes current data.

Dependencies

Python 3.7

If you do not have this Python version, we recommend you to download it by typing the following command in the Ubuntu terminal:

sudo chmod +x python_Autonomous_driving_pipeline.sh
./python_Autonomous_driving_pipeline.sh

ROS Kinetic/Melodic/Noetic

Depending on the Ubuntu version, there are three compatible ROS distributions.

• Ubuntu 16.04: ROS Kinetic. http://wiki.ros.org/kinetic/Installation/Ubuntu

• Ubuntu 18.04: ROS Melodic. http://wiki.ros.org/melodic/Installation/Ubuntu

• Ubuntu 20.04: ROS Noetic. http://wiki.ros.org/noetic/Installation/Ubuntu

Python Libraries

We have built a bash script and a requirements.txt file with all the python modules required for our ROS pipeline. You can run them in your command line by typing:

sudo chmod +x dependencies_Autonomous_driving_pipeline.sh
./dependencies_Autonomous_driving_pipeline.sh
pip install -r requirements.txt

• Openpifpaf 0.11.9

• TrajNet++

• math

• numpy

• scipy

• matplotlib

• PIL

• torch 1.7.1

• collections

• cython 0.29.21

• OpenCV 3.3