Docking the Pioneer LX with ROSARIA

I have implemented the ROS navigation stack on my Pioneer LX robot with ROSARIA, and I now want to implement docking functionality. The previous ros-arnl interface provided docking functionality by calling the rosarnl_node/dock service, so I'm looking for a similar implementation with ROSARIA. The way I believe it worked was that the robot navigates to a predefined location in front of the docking station, facing towards it. It then recognizes the shape of the docking station with the laser, rotates 180 degrees and backs onto the docking station with help of its sonar sensors.

Are there any kind of similar implementation of this with ROSARIA? I'm not quite sure where to begin with this problem...

Asked by fendrbud on 2020-02-27 06:00:06 UTC

Comments

Hi @fendrbud,

Rosaria is a mere interface to ROS for ARIA control software implemented on most Adept MobileRobots. There is no such a service implementing docking, thus the high level controller must be implemented on custom ROS nodes.

I see different problems to solve in order to achieve that behavior

Setting up and tune the LX navigation stack.
Define how you are going to represent your docking stations and how to go to them from any point in the world. That can be achieved by defining your docks as special goals that can be feed to the move_base.
Implement the high level to decide when to go to the nearest dock station. Rosaria provides the /battery_state_of_charge topic to known when the battery needs a charge. You can implement your logic around that value.
Deal with the docking task. I do not have a lot of experience dealing with this kind of situations but you can take a look at its code. Since it is a wrapper, it is using ARIA classes (ArDocking.h).

Asked by Weasfas on 2020-02-27 07:31:05 UTC

Docking the Pioneer LX with ROSARIA

Comments

Answers