WiRoM: heterogeneous multi-robot mission planning

This project is a part of a master thesis. The purpose of this project is to create a system for planning missions for heterogeneous multi-robot setups, letting the user create missions directly from the browser and execute them in a simulated environment.

Link to web interface instructions

Link to quarantine delivery mission

Instructions for testing the system and a questionnaire that can be answered after testing the system is provided at the bottom of this readme file. This data will be used to evaluate the system for the master thesis.

Pre-requirements

To use the system as-is, one needs to download and install the LATEST VERSION of the robot simulaton tool Webots. Webots is a powerful and open-source robot simulation tool that provides a big robot repository and possibilty for having multi-robot setups and create controllers for different robots, as well as streaming to a web platform.

Go to Cyberbotics website to find instructions on how to download and install Webots: https://cyberbotics.com/

One could use another simulation if desired, but then one would need to program the controllers and add simpleactions for that simulation tool, in order for it to work.

You also need to have Python and Node.js installed, with their respective package commands pip and npm.

Node.js / npm : https://nodejs.org/en/

Python / pip : https://www.python.org/downloads/

It is also highly recommended to have some bash-like terminal (e.g. https://gitforwindows.org/) installed if you use Windows, because the commands given in this readme will be compatible with those types of terminals.

How to run the system from the GitHub repository

Clone the repository to your local machine using the command:

git clone https://github.com/joakimgrutle/Multi-robot-mission-planner.git

This system is a web application, and uses a server-client setup for communicating between the browser and the simulation. This means we need to run the server and the client in order to run the system.

Running the client

First you start by running the web-client. Open a new terminal and navigate into the repository folder, then the robot-mission-planner folder, then the src folder:

cd WiRoM/web_interface

First run the following command to install all packages:

npm install

Then run the following command to start the client:

npm start

The client is now running at localhost:3000 (a new window should open automatically in you browser)

Running the server

After the client is started, you can start the server. Open another new terminal window and navigate into the repository folder, then the scouting missions folder, then the controllers folder:

cd WiRoM/backend

First run the following command to install all packages (listed in requirements.txt):

pip install -r requirements.txt

Then run the following command to start the server:

flask run

This should start the server of the system and it should say it is running on the local ip at port 5000

Running Webots

The third thing we have to do is start Webots, either normally or in streaming mode (streaming has to be run via terminal). Opening normally is simply opening the program using the executable file (link to webots docs below). However it is strongly recommended to open in streaming mode, such that the simulation can be viewed directly from the browser, which gives the best experience of the system.

To open in streaming mode on Mac, open a new terminal and navigate to the installation folder, which typically is Applications/Webots.app and run it using the command :

./webots --stream

To open in streaming mode on Windows, also navigate to the bin folder in the installation folder, typically C:\Users\"username"\AppData\Local\Programs\Webots\msys64\mingw64\bin and run the program from a terminal using the command:

./webots.exe --stream

This should open a new Webots instance, and it might ask for permission to access the web.

For the official documentation on how to start Webots normally and in streaming mode for Windows, Mac and Linux go to: https://cyberbotics.com/doc/guide/starting-webots

After Webots is running, simply click File -> Open world and navigate to Multi-robot-mission-planner/scouting-mission/worlds and select the the file called

scouting-mission.wbt

When you have completed all the steps, the system is ready to be used.

System instructions and questionnaire

Follow these links to the instructions for testing the system, and then when you are done with this, go to the questionnaire and answer the questions.

Link to web interface quick instructions

Written instructions for testing the system

Questionnaire for after testing the system