/ros-vehicle

Primary LanguageC++

ROS support for 1:8 scale vehicle

Hardware

We have forked Benjamins code for the motor controller. Our fork is on github at https://github.com/finkultur/bldc .

  1. Installation

1.1. Install ROS by following the instruction at http://wiki.ros.org/indigo/Installation/Ubuntu

1.2. Clone the dat295 repository: git clone https://<username>@bitbucket.org/thpe/dat295.git

1.3. Fix udev rules

1.3.1. cp dat295/99-usb-serial.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
1.3.2. Reload rules: udevadm control --reload-rules

1.4. Build and flash software for the motor controller board

1.4.1. Clone the bldc repository: git clone https://github.com/finkultur/bldc.git
1.4.2. cd bldc
1.4.3. Compile and build: make
1.4.4. Flash motor controller: st-flash write build/BLDC_4_ChibiOS.bin 0x8000000

1.5. Build and flash software for the IMU

1.5.1. cd dat295/vehicle/DiscoveryBoard
1.5.2. Compile and build: make
1.5.3. Flash: st-flash write build/stm32f3discovery-demo.bin 0x8000000

1.6. Build all ROS modules

1.6.1. cd dat295/vehicle/catkin_ws/
1.6.2. catkin_make
1.6.3. source devel/setup.bash

1.7. Install joystick drivers:

1.7.1. Install xboxdrv through your regular packet manager, e.g: apt-get install xboxdrv
1.7.2. Run lsusb to find out productId and vendorId of joystick

  1. Drive manually with Joystick

2.1. On ROS-master (the car), run: roslaunch /dat295/vehicle/catkin_ws/src/master_dbj.launch
2.2. On ROS-slave, run (in separate terminals):
2.2.1. xboxdrv --device-by-id <vendorId>:<productId> --type xbox360
2.2.2. roslaunch dat295/vehicle/catkin_ws/src/slave.launch

  1. Drive by Autopilot

3.1. Create a set of waypoints with tracker.py: dat295/vehicle/tracker/tracker.py
3.2. Output waypoints (press SPACE in tracker) and copy these into top of dat295/vehicle/catkin_ws/src/autopilot/scripts/autopilot.py
3.3. Launch the autopilot by running roslaunch dat295/vehicle/catkin_ws/src/master_autopilot.launch

  1. Tracker

4.1. To track position of car, run: dat295/vehicle/tracker/tracker.py --track <track>.track --plot
4.2. When editing track, see top of script for instructions

  1. Configuration

Configuration can be done by editing the files

  • dat295/vehicle/catkin_ws/src/autopilot/scripts/config.py
  • dat295/vehicle/catkin_ws/src/master_autopilot.launch
  • dat295/vehicle/catkin_ws/src/master_dbj.launch
  • dat295/vehicle/catkin_ws/src/slave.launch

To let the car interpret speed commands as current instead of RPM, change the two calls to set_rpm() in dat295/vehicle/catkin_ws/src/bldc_mc/src/bldc_mc.cpp to set_current(). Thismight be useful if the motor controller dies of a voltage drop. The probable cause is most likely a bad capacitor (and a too sudden speed change).