Are there any potential issues when working with older versions of ROS on the following robotic setup?

asked 2013-09-29 08:55:11 -0600

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So I am working on a project, and the robot that I have access to is similar to a turtlebot based off an iRobot. It has a Kinect as well, ofcourse. The issue is that this particular robot was developed on a system with the following specs -

2x Intel Atom CPU N270, 1.60 GHz, 2GB
Ubuntu 11.10
ROS 1.6.8

Since this system is a "research robot", I don't wish to update it in case I mess it all up and end up losing the work that was done on it.

What are the potential problems that I might face in this case -

Do I need to update it in order to be able to work with Kinect properly (considering I won't get much support for the old ROS)?
Will implementing any motion planning algorithm (utilizing real-time info from the kinect) on this system lead to performance issues?

I understand this isn't a typical ROS related issue, but it would be helpful if anyone could point out any issues and/or solutions for this.

answered 2013-09-29 10:39:13 -0600

fergs

13902 ●59 ●157 ●196 http://www.robotandchisel.com

The older openni drivers had problems -- however, they also had stable points. Being on an older Ubuntu release with an older ROS install, you might hit one of those stable points. I think you'll just have to test it and see.

That Atom is not all that powerful, depending on what you are doing, you may want to turn down the Kinect frame rate or image size (see the openni_camera driver docs) to help out your code. Regardless, the question above is far too broad -- you can certainly find some motion planning algorithm for which you cannot run it on that Atom, and you can certainly find several motion planning algorithms for which the Atom is overkill -- it really all depends on what you are doing and at what framerate/image size.

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Thank you! I will look into it further then.

nemesis ( 2013-09-29 11:10:54 -0600 )edit

@fergs - I was provided with a replacement laptop. The replacement seems to be worse than the above configuration. Intel Pentium M, 1.70 GHz, 1 GB RAM I guess this won't do either?

nemesis ( 2013-10-03 11:27:48 -0600 )edit

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Are there any potential issues when working with older versions of ROS on the following robotic setup?

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Are there any potential issues when working with older versions of ROS on the following robotic setup? edit

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Are there any potential issues when working with older versions of ROS on the following robotic setup?