Auto-Navigation For Robots. Implementation of ROS
Fiki Jusuf · Theseus (Ammattikorkeakoulujen) · 2016
The purpose of this thesis was to investigate how to perform and operate auto-navigation for robots. The best candidate to perform the navigation was based on Robot Operating System, ROS, developed by Willow Garage in 2007. The system was developed under BSD license and gradually has attracted more experts to implement the system. As a result, it has become a widely-used platform among researchers of robotics community. In 2013 the maintenance and the core development of ROS was transferred to Open Source Robotics Foundation and is still running until this day. Currently ROS is implemented by tens of thousands of users all around the world varying from hobby projects to large scale industrial automation systems. A small introduction of ROS history and its operating method is discussed in the first chapter in order to understand the principle of ROS. After the introduction, a more detailed analysis of navigation in ROS is presented. The auto-navigation performance was tested with a simulation where a TurtleBot, an open source personal research robot, is used in a simulated world. The robot was positioned in a maze map where, first, its approximate location in the map was established before giving a command to navigate autonomously to the desired end point. The robot observed with laser scanners possible obstructions and walls in order to avoid collisions and reach its destination. Also testing Turtlebot’s navigation in an unknown environment was performed. First step was to create a map using SLAM method by controlling TurtleBot manually. After the map was created, TurtleBot managed to perform auto-navigation on the created map. In this thesis, also the installation of ROS and the simulation package in Linux Ubuntu OS is explained step-by-step before describing the performed simulation test and presenting the results. Finally, a conclusion of auto-navigation performance is discussed and analyzed based on the results.