[ros-users] iCreate Roomba with ROS

[Odest Chadwicke Jenkins]

Hi Gon?alo,

It is great to hear you are using ROS with the Roomba.

Our current irobot_create_2_1 is setup to work only with the Create 
platform, and not the Roomba, due to differences in iRobot's Open 
Interface protocols.  However, I believe irobot_create_2_1 could be 
easily patched for Roomba Open Interface commands, although I would 
defer to Trevor Jay who wrote this driver.  irobot_create_2_1 has a 
table that maps between ROS and Open Interface serial data, could be 
modified dynamically.

Trevor, could you confirm or suggest the best way to move forward for 
Roomba support?

-Chad

> Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 15:18:38 +0100
> From: Gon?alo Cabrita <goncabrita at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [ros-users] iCreate Roomba with ROS
> To: ros-users at code.ros.org
> Message-ID:
> 	<AANLkTimsNY-AKyhnSQyMvsxXcqJL0mnIFVWq1GvOio_E at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> Thanks for the quick reply!
> 
>  I'll take a look at "irobot_create_2_1" to start with. The protocol is
> different from the roomba 500 series but it should provide a good starting
> point!
> 
> Gon?alo Cabrita
> 
> On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 2:46 PM, <sh2723 at columbia.edu> wrote:
> 
>> > Hi Gon?alo,
>> >
>> > I'm not sure my understanding on your next step. I think you may start
>> > to look over "irobot_create_2_1". I've successfully run iCreate with
>> > this packages.
>> >
>> > Best,
>> > Soonhac
>> >
>> > Quoting Gon?alo Cabrita <goncabrita at gmail.com>:
>> >
>>> > > Hi everyone!
>>> > >
>>> > > I recently started to explore ROS. I ran the tutorials and got one
>>> > > of our Hokuyo lasers working with ROS. The next logical step is
>>> > > probably to get a robot moving. Here at the lab we have a bunch of
>>> > > Roombas.
>>> > >
>>> > > We have been using Player on the Roombas with a plugin driver I
>>> > > wrote specifically for the 500 series. I would like to re-write that
>>> > >  driver to run native on ROS.
>>> > >
>>> > > We also have a couple of erratics and I noticed that there is an
>>> > > erratic_player node inspired on the erratic player driver, however
>>> > > I'm not looking to do a similar thing, I want to write something ROS
>>> > >  native (assuming I understood right what was done there).
>>> > >
>>> > > Could anyone advise me on which direction to take next?
>>> > >
>>> > > Thanks for the support,
>>> > >
>>> > > Gon?alo Cabrita
>>> > > ISR - University of Coimbra
>>> > > Portugal