A ROS~2-based Navigation and Simulation Stack for the Robotino

TL;DR

The results demonstrate the feasibility of using ROS2 and Nav2 for navigation tasks on the Robotino platform showing great consistency between simulation and real-world performance.

Abstract

The Robotino, developed by Festo Didactic, serves as a versatile platform in education and research for mobile robotics tasks. However, there currently is no ROS2 integration for the Robotino available. In this paper, we describe our work on a Webots simulation environment for a Robotino platform extended by LIDAR sensors. A ROS2 integration and a pre-configured setup for localization and navigation using existing ROS packages from the Nav2 suite are provided. We validate our setup by comparing simulations with real-world experiments conducted by three Robotinos in a logistics environment in our lab. Additionally, we tested the setup using a ROS 2 hardware driver for the Robotino developed by team GRIPS of the RoboCup Logistics League. The results demonstrate the feasibility of using ROS2 and Nav2 for navigation tasks on the Robotino platform showing great consistency between simulation and real-world performance.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: ROS components overview
• Figure 2: LIDAR setup in simulation and on the real robot
• Figure 3: Representation of the pose of the robot relative to the world reference frame $(X_W, Y_W)$. The frame $(X_R, Y_R)$ is the robot frame of reference, with $X_R$ depicting its front. $(R_a, R_b, R_c)$ represents the radial distances and $(\delta_a, \delta_b, \delta_c)$ represent the angular orientation of wheels relative to the robot frame of reference
• Figure 4: A comparison of the global plans generated by different planner plugins for the same goal.
• Figure 5: Simulation map with 1 mobile robot(s), 2. static machines 3. Border walls.