Mobile robotics python

This repository holds the codebase for maritime robotics and intelligent mobile robotics. The software has been designed as a set of modular classes to enable interoperability between different robot and sensor types.

How to remotely connect to your MR kits

• Install RealVNC viewer in your laptop or machine your are going to use to remotely login to the kit.
• Connect your laptop to a wifi network called "oplab-net". If you are working in a lab session with teachers, we will bring a wireless router that is configured. If you are working on your own, you can use your mobile phone to create a "hotspot". Configure it with a network name "oplab-net" and no password. Your raspberry will connect to this network if available. Make sure you connect your laptop to this wifi.
• Turn on your raspberry, either via the battery or via the mains plug.
• Open RealVNC viewer and setup a new connection to the hostname "sess6072-X", where "X" is your kit number (1 to 6).
• When prompted for a username and password, use "robot" and "qwerty" respectively.

How to run

In a console, run the following command to print the help.

mobile_robotics_python -h

You should see the following output:

     ● ●  Ocean Perception
     ● ▲  University of Southampton
 
 Copyright (C) 2022 University of Southampton   
 This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
 This is free software, and you are welcome to  
 redistribute it.                               
 
usage: mobile_robotics_python [-h] [-c CONFIGURATION] [--upload] [--connect] [-v]

Base code for mobile robotics

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -c CONFIGURATION, --configuration CONFIGURATION
                        Configuration file
  --upload              Upload current code to the robot
  --connect             Connect to the robot
  -v, --verbose         Set the verbosity level

The program requires you to provide a configuration file, which are by default stored at src/mobile_robotics_python/configuration.

• For mobile robotics, use the file pitop_robot.yaml.
• For maritime robotics, use the file mrbuild.yaml.

We recommend you to copy the file to you home directory and edit it as you require.

To start the program with your configuration file, you will need to run the following command in the robot rasbpberry pi

mobile_robotics_python -c path/to/configuration/file.yaml

What should I modify to implement a new algorithm?

• To implement a new localisation driver: use the templates in src/mobile_robotics_python/localisation_solutions such as extended_kalman_filter.py, particle_filter.py or slam.py.
• To implement a new navigation driver: use the template in src/mobile_robotics_python/navigation_solutions named line_of_sight.py.
• To modify the main robot behaviour: modify the Robot class in the file src/mobile_robotics_python/robot.py.

How to update to the latest version

To pull the changes from github, first you need to save any local changes with git, update your code to the same github version and then reapply your changes on top.

First, open a terminal window in your raspberry pi and navigate to the directory of this repository. You can do it by typing the following:

cd ~/git/mobile_robotics_python

then, lets save any local changes you might have

git stash

This command should return a sentence starting with Saved working directory [...].

Then, pull any changes from the remote

git pull

And recover your changes we saved before with

git stash pop

This command should return about half a dozen lines starting with On branch main [...].

How to install

Note: this software is already installed in your kits. You do not need to install it again.

git clone git@github.com:ocean-perception/mobile_robotics_python.git
cd mobile_robotics_python
pip install -U --user -e .