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Supporting White Box's M3 Controller in ROS? Supported in Player as WBR914.

asked 2012-08-07 09:35:47 -0500

RchGrav gravatar image

updated 2012-08-07 14:03:20 -0500

joq gravatar image

Hello,

I recently got my first robot.. it is a WBR914 which is officially supported by player/stage. Since ROS integrates with that system I was hoping that I could use the full ROS operating system. Now I am learning as I go along and read more that stage is being implemented via a wrapper with ROS, and player isn't being used.

I have been following through all of the ROS tutorials doing my "Due Diligence" to learn the platform, but now I am seeing that it may be for nothing. I was planning on using a Kinect and also a turret or robot arm from Trossen robotics to expand my robot in the future.

Is there anything which will allow me to use player with ROS, or would it be difficult to adapt the source in Player to allow my WBR914 to work natively with ROS.

It looks like this is going to be quite a project to get working, and was wondering if anyone in the community would be willing to give a hand, or take a look at the code in player and see how hard it would be to adapt. There is a number of these WBR robots floating around on the open market right now since Heathkit went out of business. There is the potential of about 40 of the White Box Robotics barebones hitting ebay in the near future..

I am willing to provide full remote access to my bot and work with anyone who is willing to assist in getting it working.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=white+Box+robotics+914

Best Regards,

Richard Graver

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Hi Joq. I spent an evening trying to utilize the same method as the Erratic Robot, which was invoking / wrapping the WBR914 Player driver of Player/Stage. Thanks for the heads up on Coroware, looks like a good lead, I'll check it out.

RchGrav gravatar image RchGrav  ( 2012-08-11 06:05:53 -0500 )edit

It seems that Coroware's website is down, maybe the company is out of business? Anyway, the best info can probably be found here... https://www.google.com/search?q=ROS+Player+Wrapper

RchGrav gravatar image RchGrav  ( 2012-08-11 06:32:58 -0500 )edit

Just wanted to share a video from ROSCon 2012 - Writing Hardware Drivers - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pagC2WXT1x0

RchGrav gravatar image RchGrav  ( 2012-08-11 07:03:45 -0500 )edit

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answered 2012-08-07 14:04:12 -0500

joq gravatar image

updated 2012-08-07 14:05:09 -0500

You can probably port the controller to ROS fairly easily, or even run Player in a ROS node, if desired.

See: this related question.

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answered 2013-08-23 15:25:33 -0500

twgray gravatar image

No answer, just a question about whether you got anywhere on this? I purchased one of the WBR914's around Christmas time and am just now getting to a point that I have time to "play" with it. As a complete ROS newbie I was wondering if anyone had found support for it in ROS.

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Asked: 2012-08-07 09:35:47 -0500

Seen: 413 times

Last updated: Aug 23 '13