Ability to Virtualize or Use Android Phone as Joystick?

asked 2016-03-09 15:38:20 -0600

bzhan
21 ●9 ●10 ●13

Hi, I'm hoping to create a virtual joystick or use my android phone as a joystick so that I don't need the physical joystick to be with me at all times, but couldn't figure out how to do so online. In particular, the app I'm creating reads out of the buttons and axes. Are there any suggestions? I am using ROS indigo

answered 2016-03-10 03:36:26 -0600

gvdhoorn
86574 ●283 ●1432 ●1054 http://cor.tudelft.nl/

(note: I'm not the author of this, don't know if/how it works, and just found it using a 'random' Google search)

For a non-ROS solution: apparently there are tools that can do this. See droidpad fi (Github repository here). It's a bit unclear, but if this creates an actual joystick device under Linux (uses uinput, so potentially it should/could), it should work just like any other joystick, and you'd be able to use the regular joy node(s) and everything else that works with Linux joysticks.

A different approach is taken with the various Android 'teleop' applications, which connect to a remote ROS node graph and directly publish geometry_msgs/Twist and associated messages. An example would be com.github.rosjava.android_apps.teleop.indigo (playstore link).