merging yocs_keyop and yocs_joyop with ros-teleop?

[jihoonl]

There is ros-teleop repositories started by @mikepurvis which contains teleop joystick and teleop keyboard. Shall we merge yocs implementations with them?

[bit-pirate]

I was looking into existing solutions before as well. Actually none of them (including our own) are rocket science, but they all differ slightly. Differences are for example the chosen keyboard layout (letter keys vs. arrows keys) and additional features, such as enable/disable motors.

A common solution would be nice, but the question is, would it be worth the effort, since it is such a simple program. Looking at merging, I don't think we will find a "one-size-fits-all" solution. Hence, we would need to come up with a way to derive custom versions from the standard version, e.g. kobuki_keyop = teleop_twist_keyboard + enable/disable motors.

[stonier]

I always get this cringing feeling when creating another teleop package too, like it should be standard. At the end of the day though, they're all a bit different and not that much work so never got the priority bump it needed to make sure we're compatible with the holy grail of teleops anywhere.

[stonier]

Our keyboard teleop too is quite different to the standard teleop (like that used in turtlebot). That requires keys to be continually pressed. Ours increments on every key release. The former is more gamish but the latter we found easier for doing control testing. Can precisely increment velocities and also enables rotational experiments with the hands off the keyboard.

If we were going to push our keyboard keyop, I'd put it into that repository as an 'alternative' keyop solution. That might not be a bad idea.

[mikepurvis]

We're now maintaining enough very similar vehicles that it became worthwhile to abstract a single joy/key/interactive-markers teleop scheme common to Husky, Grizzly, Jackal, and Kingfisher (and other internal platforms).

At least for the case teleop_twist_joy, it's intended to be embeddable in some other node, if you like: https://github.com/ros-teleop/teleop_twist_joy/blob/indigo-devel/include/teleop_twist_joy/teleop_twist_joy.h#L36

[stonier]

Damn, you're everwhere Mike. And aye, we could probably use that pimpl idiomised class to embed the joystick functionality inside a node that adds the enable/disable functionality in ours. Will get someone to have a look at that when we have time.

In the meantime we should certainly switch the turtlebot teleop code to use these for indigo and I might pull request our alternative keyop in at some point so we don't have to maintain it separately.