Autonomous Newbie Project

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Installation
3. Tasks
4. Project Tree
5. Contact Details

Intro

In the Autonomous subgroup you will be required to independently plan and develop programs requiring knowledge outside the scope of your university learning. As such we emplore you to employ critical reasoning and research to help guide your development. This project will expose you to ROS 2 (Robot Operating System 2), a middleware underpinning the majority of development within our team. Using which you will create a velocity controller that subscribes to coordinates and responds with velocity controls in order to reach a desired moving target point.

You are allowed to ask Autonomous senior members for logistical help (Setting up your development environment), or guidance if you are truly stuck. However, we ask that people work independently and refrain from collaborating with others. This is ultimately a final assessment of applicants' own abilities.

Key outcomes:

• Demonstrate programming competency.
• Demonstrate the ability to learn new concepts.
• Demonstrate ability to commit required work hours.

Installation

Follow the appropriate installation method for your operating system on the official ROS2 Humble docs: https://docs.ros.org/en/humble/Installation.html

Tasks

Part 1:

This project relies heavily on basic knowledge of ROS2 concepts. Before you start you must complete the beginner tutorials also provided on the official ROS2 Humble Documentation.

Part 2:

Provided in the install folder is a ROS2 package (autonomous_take_home_projest_runner) with the runner executable. You will use this to publish data which your node will subscribe and respond to. To run the data runner you need to source the installation folder:

At the root of the project directory run:

source ./install/setup.bash

Then lauch the node using:

ros2 run autonomous_take_home_project_runner runner data.csv

This will run for around 11 seconds. practice using the CLI commands to analyse the messages being published.

Part 3:

Create a node to subscribe to the published topic and calculate characteristics of the target location's motion. These should then be published on the 'response' topic using the '/msgs/response' message, under the 'target' attribute.

Part 4:

The 'target_location' data is meant to represent a desired position the vehicle routes to. You can imagine it is produced by path planner designed that inexplicably provides erroneous data from time to time. You must, classify and filter erroneous 'target_location' data, that does not adhere to the feasibility conditions, listed in the handout. Publish the last valid target location under "Response.lvtl".

Part 5:

Simulate the kinematics of a vehicle using a unicyle model that tracks the target location. The vehicle should only be allowed to moved forwards and turn. Lateral movement is not valid. Publish these values under "Response.vehicle". You will also need to publish the point that the vehicle is current navigating to on "Response.target_location".

Project tree

• install
  • autonomous_take_home_project (your install location)
  • autonomous_take_home_project_runner (test runner binaries)
  • msgs (custom ROS2 messages install location)
  • setup.* (environmnet setup scripts)
• src
  • autonomous_take_home_project (your package to make)
    • CMakeLists.txt (update with build process) - ask for help if needed
    • package.xml (update with dependencies)
    • include
      • autonomous_take_home_project (any includes you share between source files)
    • src (your source code)
      • main.cpp
  • msgs (custom ROS2 messages package)
    • msg
      • LocationStamped.msg
      • Response.msg
      • Kinematics.msg
    • package.xml (don't touch)
    • CMakeLists.txt (don't touch)
• data.csv (simulation data)

Your ROS2 Node should be written in the ./src/autonomous_take_home_project/src folder. When built using colcon, package binaries will appear under ./install/autonomous_take_home_project.

The package provided is a stand in for a C++ package. It has not been properly configured with the correct dependencies and will not build if you attempt to include using any libraries. Delete and recreate it if you wish to create your node using python. The msgs package must be made a dependency of your package, you will learn how to do this using the provided tutorials. The runner is built to communicate with the msgs provided in the handout msgs package.

To be able to run your executable you will need to ensure you have sourced the package.

eg:
(Linux)

source ./install/setup.bash

When you wish to test the functionality of your node make sure to run your node in one terminal, and then in a second terminal run the runner (remember to source the workspace in both).

Setup help for windows users:

We recommend using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Please refer to this guide by Microsoft for installation: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install