Botler - a robot butler

Video demo's

You can find a couple of video demo's on youtube.

• The detection of a Duvel glass and immediately retrieving a cold bottle. https://youtu.be/SxhWcpMGnKo
• The detection of a Hoegaarden glass, it then finds a warm bottle and goes on to the next one. This time the bottle is cold, while returning to deliver the bottle the Botler gets stuck for a little while but frees himself and continues on. https://youtu.be/kjZcUSo2r7g

Installation

• to be sure everything works, clone the repository in your home directory
• move into the botler repository (cd botler)
• move into the catkin workspace (cd catkin_ws)
• initialise the git modules (git submodules init)
• update the git modules (git submodules update)

Because we use a custom world with a custom robot a few changes have to be made to the turtlebot3 package. These changes were not implementable into our git repository because of the use of submodules.

• move into the turtlebot3 description folder (cd src/turtlebot3/turtlebot3_description/urdf)
• edit the files "turtlebot3_burger.gazebo.xacro" and "turtlebot3_burger.urdf.xacro" to add the content of the camera in gazebo.txt file in the root of our project

Now you can build the project

• catkin_make

Execution

Since we had some troubles using launch files for all our nodes we were not able to implement them all. To start our botler use the following commands:

• export TURTLEBOT3_MODEL=burger
• export GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH=~/botler/catkin_ws/src/botler_sim/models/:$GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH
• roslaunch botler_launch botler.launch (This will launch gazebo, our vision and our movement nodes)

Unfortunatly we were not able to create a launchfile for the webstream, to start it enter these commands in seperate terminals. Don't forget to "source devel/setup.sh" when opening a new terminals

• rosrun web_video_server web_video_server
• roslaunch rosbridge_server rosbridge_websocket.launch
• cd src/dashboard/scripts/ and run python -m SimpleHTTPServer

Manual Execution

In case you don't fully trust us you can find the manual startup sequence below.

• go back to the catkin workspace (cd botler/catkin_ws)
• source devel/setup.sh
• choose the turtlebot robot (export TURTLEBOT3_MODEL=burger)
• define to location of the gazebo files (export GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH=~/botler/catkin_ws/src/botler_sim/models/:$GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH)

Now we will start the different nodes, everytime you open a new terminal don't forget to "source devel/setup.sh"

General setup

• start a roscore : "roscore"
• the gazebo world : "roslaunch botler_sim the_bar.launch"

Vision

• the logo detector : "rosrun logo_detector logo_detector_node.py"
• the thermal detector : "rosrun thermal_detector thermal_detector.py"

Movement

• start our pathfinder : "rosrun movement path_finder.py"
• start the drive converter : "rosrun movement drive_conversion.py"

Web Dashboard

• start the web video server : "rosrun web_video_server web_video_server"
• start a bridge between the websocket and ros : "roslaunch rosbridge_server rosbridge_websocket.launch"
• To start the webserver first navigate to its folder : "cd src/dashboard/scripts/"
• start the webserver itself : "python -m SimpleHTTPServer"

Master Controller

• and lastly start the master controll node : "rosrun master_control controller.py"