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🐐 Capra-Markhor is a ROS-based solution for managing and operating Club Capra's second rescue robot. 🐐

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markhor

Installing dependencies

You can use this command inside the markhor_ws to install the project dependencies. This might not take into account the Gazebo upgrade that we need to do to run the simulation correctly. rosdep install --from-paths src --rosdistro melodic -y

The ros_package capra_estop is essential to launch markhor. It should be located in the markhor_ws/src directory. If the module is not there, markhor will not launch and you will see the following error message : Resource not found: capra_estop

Package dependencies

Other intented use packages

Altough not required, these packages are also expected to be installed alongside markhor. If not present, error messages will appear when launching the robot.

Launching the robot

There are multiple launch configurations depending on your needs. The intended use being that you launch them through capra_web_ui's functionality that require the capra_launch_handler installed on the platform. For reference, the terminal commands will also be added to each described configuration.

Note: Make sure you have the repository built & sourced.

  • markhor_parkour.launch : This launch file launches every movement and camera related nodes.
  • markhor_observation.launch : This launch file aims to launch every sensor equipped and the robot arm with its gripper, ovis in this case.
  • markhor_base.launch : While the two other files are made to be an optimised for competition setup, the base version launches everything simultaneously for demonstration purposes.

Environnment variable

You can add two environment variables in your bashrc.

GAZEBO_GUI : Enable/disable the GUI version of gazebo. If you don't want the gazebo gui, you can set it to false. The default value is true. This feature is mainly used for the docker version since docker doesn't have a gui by default.

MARKHOR_SIMULATION : If set to true, it disables the use of the ZED ros wrapper. This way, you don't need to clone/install the ros wrapper/SDK. The default value is false. If you clone the repo and you don't have the SDK, you won't be able to build without the variable set to false.

markhor gazebo

To use the gazebo simulation you need to update the gazebo version on your machine to at least 9.14, the default version included with melodic should be fine.

In the tutorial instead of downloading gazebo11 download gazebo9.

For this you need to follow the step-by-step alternative installation method over at : http://gazebosim.org/tutorials?tut=install_ubuntu&cat=install

Dependencies installation

Rosdep managed dependencies

Some of the dependencies require manual installation, first, install the automatic dependencies using rosdep (running from the workspace root): rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y

Gazebo_ros_tracked_vehicle_interface

To allow the tracks to be controlled with ros, you will need to build the gazebo_ros_tracked_vehicle_interface plugin, it can be found here : https://github.com/lprobsth/gazebo_ros_tracked_vehicle_interface

Clone it in your catkin workspace src folder, then you will need to update the gazebo sources following those steps:

Add the package list:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo/ubuntu-stable `lsb_release -cs` main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gazebo-stable.list'

Add the lists key:

wget https://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -

Rebuild the local index:

sudo apt-get update

Upgrade packages - gazebo9 should be included:

sudo apt-get upgrade

MAKE SURE YOU DELETE YOUR DEVEL AND BUILD FOLDERS AFTER INSTALLING THE LIBS Then use catkin make and make sure there are no errors.

OPTIONAL : AWS Small house world

If you want to use the small house world, you need to clone it in your catkin workspace and do a catkin make.

https://github.com/aws-robotics/aws-robomaker-small-house-world

Vmware 3d acceleration

If using vmware, gazebo won't launch when using 3d acceleration, 3d acceleration is required to get a decent framerate in gazebo to fix it, run the folowing command in the linux VM

echo "export SVGA_VGPU10=0" >> ~/.profile

Running the simulation

Start the simulation with tracks

roslaunch markhor_gazebo test_world.launch

Note: Make sure you have the repository built & sourced.

Running the simulation with Markhor

Start sending cmd_vel command through a joystick

roslaunch markhor_bringup teleop_twist_joy.launch

Start sending cmd_vel command through the keyboard

rosrun teleop_twist_keyboard teleop_twist_keyboard.py cmd_vel:=/markhor/diff_drive_controller/cmd_vel

Controlling the flippers axe through ROS

When running the simulation with the tracks you can control the flippers axe with this command:

rostopic pub -1 /markhor/flipper_<fl|fr|rl|rr>_position_controller/command std_msgs/Float64 "data: <0 = 180deg -3 = -180deg>"

In the future this control will be done with a hardware interface.

Running using Docker

Overview

Docker has been tested on Linux only. All the code has been installed in a docker in a two step process. There is "base" package which contains all the dependencies and files that doesn't change often. Then there is "marhor" package which contains the code of the robot. This way, the building time of "markhor" is shorter.

In github, the "base" package (container) is only updated if the file Dockerfile.base has been changed. The "markhor" package (container) is updated at each commit/push.

Usage

If you are running in simulation, you can start gazebo in docker using the following command:

./scripts/start_gazebo.sh

Once you have Gazebo or the real robot running, you can start the slam and navigation stack with the following command:

docker-compose up

This will take the online packages and start the system. If ever you want to build the images, you can use the following commands:

./scripts/build_markhor_base.sh
./scripts/build_markhor.sh

The first script will build the base image. The second one will build the Markhor image. If you only did change to the code, you can only build the Markhor image. If you did change to the dependencies, you need to build the base image.

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🐐 Capra-Markhor is a ROS-based solution for managing and operating Club Capra's second rescue robot. 🐐

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