RoboCup@Home VizBox

The RoboCup@Home VizBox is a little webserver @Home robots can run to vizualize what is going on.

The main page shows

an outline of the current challenge and where the robot is in the story of that challenge.
Subtitles of what the robot and operator just said; their conversation
Images of what the robot sees or a visualisation of the robot's world model, eg. camera images, it's map, anything to make clear what is going on to the audience.

Additionally, the server accepts HTTP POSTs to which a command sentence can be submitted on /command

Backends

The server abstracts over the underlying robot via a Backend. A backend accepts messages from the robot's internals. A message is forwarded to the web page via websockets.

Currently, only a ROS backend is implemented:

Subscriptions:

operator_text std_msgs/String What the robot has heard the operator say
robot_text std_msgs/String What the robot itself is saying
challenge_step std_msgs/UInt32 Active item index in the plan or action sequence the robot is executing.
image sensor_msgs/Image Image of what the robo sees or anything else interesting to the audience

Publications

command std_msgs/String Command HTTP POSTed to the robot.

TODO

Allow robot to push action sequence and challenge name to server. Allows for GPSR action sequences etc.

Installation and try out

git clone https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/vizbox.git
cd vizbox
sudo pip install -r requirements.txt

roscore # in separate terminal
./server.py image:=/usb_cam/image_raw # Remaps the image-topic to output of the USB cam, see below

Open The web page on localhost

To reproduce the the screenshot:

roslaunch usb_cam usb_cam-test.launch # separate terminal
rostopic pub /challenge_step std_msgs/UInt32 "data: 0" --once
rostopic pub /robot_text std_msgs/String "data: 'Hello operator'" --once
rostopic pub /operator_text std_msgs/String "data: 'Robot, follow me'" --once
rostopic pub /robot_text std_msgs/String "data: 'OK, I will follow you'" --once;
rostopic pub /challenge_step std_msgs/UInt32 "data: 1" --once

POST commands

Use

http -f POST localhost:8888/command command="Robot, follow me"

(Using the very handy HTTPie utility) to get a publication on the /command topic

Buttons

Buttons are pushing messages in next_step topic.

To see pushed messages use :

rostopic echo next_step # separate terminal

To change messages, modify the values of CMD_BTN1 and CMD_BTN2 at the beginning of server.py

natnaelargaw/vizbox