Basic Obstacle Avoidance with TurtleBot

This repository implements a naive method to avoid obstacles and keep moving in a straight line.

Standard install via command-line

mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
cd ~/catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/rishabh1b/Walking_TurtleBot/
catkin_init_workspace
cd ~/catkin_ws
catkin_make

Dependencies

ROS Kinetic. This can be downloaded by following the steps here.
ROS standard package for TurtleBot Simulation in Gazebo- ros-kinetic-turtlebot-gazebo. Install using -

sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-turtlebot-gazebo

CMake. This can be downloaded from here

Basic Demonstration

Following commands will spawn turtlebot in Gazebo environment (turtlebot_world) to simulate an obstacle avoidance behaviour using laserscan data

cd ~/catkin_ws/
source devel/setup.bash
roslaunch simple_walker demo.launch

Working with Bag Files

For optionally recording the bag files with all the topics except /camera/* topics for a specific duration run the following

roslaunch simple_walker demo.launch rec_bag:=true bag_dur:=30

The bag file get saved in ~/.ros folder

Bag Files can be inspected using

rosbag info bagfile.bag

This will enlist all the topics recorded.

For testing the recorded bag file run the following commands in separate terminals-

roscore

cd ~/catkin_ws/src/Walking_TurtleBot/simple_walker
rosrun rviz rviz -d bagTest.rviz

cd ~/catkin_ws/src/Walking_TurtleBot/simple_walker/outputs/bagFiles
rosbag play bagFileName.bag

This will simulate turtlebot's base_footprint frame with reference to odom frame and also show laser scan readings by default in rviz.