Connecting Wireless Sensor Networks to the Robot Operating System
Philipp Scholl, Brahim El Majoub, Silvia Santini, Kristof Van Laerhoven · Procedia Computer Science · 2013
Robot systems largely depend on embedded systems to operate. The interfaces of those embedded systems, e.g. motor controllers or laser scanners, are often vendor-specific and therefore require a component that translates from/to the Robot Operating System (ROS) Middleware interface. In this work we present an implementation and evaluation of a ROS Middleware client based on the Contiki operating systems, which is suitable for constrained embedded devices, like wireless sensor nodes. We show that in-buffer processing of ROS messages without relying on dynamic memory allocation is possible. That message contents can be accessed conveniently via well-known concepts of the C language (structs) with negligible processing overhead compared to a C++-based client. And that the message-passing middle- ware concept of ROS fits nicely in Contiki's event-based nature. Furthermore, in order for an environment enriched with wireless sensor network to help robots in navigating, understanding and manipulating environments a direct integration is mandatory.