Bumpybot is an omniwheel robot with fairly strong motors and with vision and force sensing capabilities. It has been designed to be (a) a research platform to benchmark navigation algorithms using both visual and force-sensing measurements, for instance, in crowded environments; and (b) a mobility device robot, i.e., one capable of carrying a person.

This stack contains our low-level code, which uses both ROS, ros_control, and SOEM. Although not perfect, we hope it helps others more easily develop and integrate these tools for their own robots. Currently, we are using the following:

• Maxon EC45 BLDC motors
• HiTec rotary torque sensors
• US digital E6 optical encoders
• Everest XCR servi drives (EtherCAT)
• UP Xtreme computer (patched with RT_PREEMPT)
• Azure Kinect
• RP Lidar 2D (A2M8)

Install ROS Noetic for Ubuntu 20.04 (recommended)

Install ROS Melodic for Ubuntu 18.04

sudo apt-get install \
    ros-$ROS_DISTRO-effort-controllers \
    ros-$ROS_DISTRO-ros-controllers \
    ros-$ROS_DISTRO-ros-control \
    ros-$ROS_DISTRO-controller-manager \
    ros-$ROS_DISTRO-gazebo-ros-pkgs \
    ros-$ROS_DISTRO-gazebo-ros-control \
    ros-$ROS_DISTRO-hardware-interface \
    ros-$ROS_DISTRO-soem \
    ros-$ROS_DISTRO-rosparam-shortcuts \
    ros-$ROS_DISTRO-joint-state-publisher-gui \
    ros-$ROS_DISTRO-teleop-twist-keyboard \
    ros-$ROS_DISTRO-slam-toolbox \
    ros-$ROS_DISTRO-navigation \
    ros-$ROS_DISTRO-teb-local-planner \
    ros-$ROS_DISTRO-rtabmap-ros \
    python3-rosdep

This stack has been developed (and only tested) on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS & Ubuntu 20.04 and ROS 1. To build, clone this repository into your catkin workspace and make sure all submodules are on the main branch:

cd catkin_ws
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/carlosiglezb/bumpybot.git src
cd src && git submodule foreach 'git checkout main'

and then build, either with catkin_make or catkin tools, e.g:

cd ~/catkin_ws
catkin_make  

Lastly, don't forget to source:

cd ~/catkin_ws
source devel/setup.bash

If you intend to use the BumpyBot in Gazebo simulation, refer to the following package:

• trikey_gazebo

Turn on the switches for Battery, Logic, and Motor. If the local computer is not turned on, manually boot up the computer. Set up your network settings to connect to the robot.

For a wireless connection, make sure to connect your remote computer to the hcrlab2 wireless network. You may access the BumpyBot computer by ssh hcrl-bumpybot@192.168.52.35

You can access the BumpyBot computer wirelessly/wired via SSH or via NoMachine Remote Desktop

Click here for instructions on setting up and using NoMachine for a remote desktop environment.

For an ethernet connection, you need to confirm your IPv4 addresses to be in the same subnet as the robot.

When BumpyBot computer turn on, it hosts an access point bumpybot by default Connect via ssh command: ssh hcrl-bumpybot@10.42.99.99

If bumpybot wifi ssid isn't being advertised, run sudo hotspot_mode.sh (or reboot BumbyBot if you don't already have terminal access). note that the wifi_mode.sh and hotspot_mode.sh scripts live in /usr/local/bin/.

Note that BumpyBot computer may not be able to connect to the internet in this mode.

On BumpyBot computer run sudo wifi_mode.sh

For a wireless connection, make sure to connect your remote computer to the hcrlab2 wireless network. You may access the BumpyBot computer by ssh hcrl-bumpybot@192.168.50.35

This will disable the hotspot if already running.

To launch the camera, run the following command on the BumpyBot computer (No sudo su)

roslaunch azure_kinect_ros_driver driver.launch

to run as nodelet, run

roslaunch azure_kinect_ros_driver kinect_rgbd.launch

to launch with trikey_base_controller

roslaunch bumpyboy_navigation depth_nav.launch

If you are hosting roscore on you remote computer, you need to set the ROS_MASTER_URI on both your remote computer and the BumpyBot computer. This configuration can be set in the .bashrc file.

In order to launch the robot, you need to run the following commands on the BumpyBot computer.

sudo su

This command will log you into root with the root environment. This is necessary to run the motors

In the root environment, ROS packages may not be located automatically, access to the bumpybot_hardward_interface by the following command

cd /home/hcrl-bumpybot/bumpybot_ws/src/bumpybot_hardware_interface/launch

Then run the following command to launch the robot

roslaunch hw_control.launch

You may see the following error message

Slave 1 State=  12 StatusCode=  24 : Invalid input mapping` 

Kill the process by ctrl-C and relaunch it.

roslaunch azure_kinect_ros

To control the robot with an Xbox controller, run the following command

roslaunch trikey_base_controller trikey_base_controller.launch

Press and hold RB or LB to move the robot with joystick and D-pad.

To control the robot with RViz Teleop Gui, run the following command

roslaunch trikey_base_controller trikey_base_controller.launch xbox:=false

You can send velocity commands by GUI.

Install the package through

sudo apt-get install ros-$ROS_DISTRO-teleop-twist-keyboard

Then, on one terminal window run

rosrun teleop_twist_keyboard teleop_twist_keyboard.py cmd_vel:=trikey/base_controller/cmd_vel

and on another one run the keyboard controller

roslaunch trikey_base_controller trikey_base_controller.launch xbox:=false

This simply commands wheel velocities independently. Open a new terminal window and load the controllers

roslaunch trikey_control trikey_control.launch

On a new terminal window, you should be able to see all of the topics published by the controllers

rostopic list

Try setting the commanded wheel position (in radians) via the ROS topic wheel<number>_position_controller, e.g.,

rostopic pub -1 /trikey/wheel1_position_controller/command std_msgs/Float64 "data: 1"

If tab completion is not working, try adding the package to ROS_PACKAGE_PATH with:

export ROS_PACKAGE_PATH=`pwd`:$ROS_PACKAGE_PATH

To test if motors are functional without ROS run these line.

cd ~/ros/hcrl_core/soem/install/bin

sudo ./everest_test enp1s0

refer to bumybot_navigation package for more information.

This code base is associated to the following publication, please feel free to check it out:

@proceedings{bumpybot,
    author = {Gonzalez, Carlos and Lee, Samantha and Montano, Francisco and Ortega, Steven and Kang, Dong Ho and Jaiswal, Mehar and Jiao, Junfeng and Sentis, Luis},
    title = {Design of a Person-Carrying Robot for Contact Compliant Navigation},
    series = {International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference},
    year = {2023},
    month = {08}
}

All feedback is welcome!