[ros-users] Turtlebot stack on Roomba (need help)

[Jan Tuennermann]

Hi Everyone,

I'm trying to get the Turtlebot stack running on Roomba + Laptop +
Kinect. Most of the things work.
Unfortunately I cannot get the turtlebot_navigation gmapping_demo
running. Move_base keeps complaining " Still waiting on map..." and
gmapping spits out " [target=/odom ]: Dropped 100.00% of messages so
far. Please turn the [ros.gmapping.message_notifier] rosconsole logger
to DEBUG for more information." Every once in a while.

I tried different ways to get in touch with the Roomba. The
roomba_500_series node is working great for teleoperation and after
renaming 'base_link' to 'base_footprint' I think I got the tf's
right because rviz can now show the laserscan. (I also needed to change
kinect_...   to openni_.. in some places).

Still I thought the the problem might be related to the roomba_500_series
stuff interfacing differently than the turtlebot_node. So I cloned that
node and tried to make it use the Roomba class out of turtlebot_driver
instead of TurtleBot. This did not work at all. It complained about not
being able toe read on the port, while connecting appears to work. After
changing the baudrate it was able to read the desired number of bytes
but crashed afterwards. I'm using the roostick for connection, maybe
there are more changed needed to make it work? Anyway, I went back to
the roomba_500_series node as everything looks fine (except for gmapping
not working...).

So I'm running out of ideas.  So maybe someone has some ideas...
Here a few questions, that might help:

- Does anyone have the turtlebot stack running on a similar combination?

- How do I enable that loggin mode, that the mentioned error msg requests?

- What else does gmapping need that a laserscan to function properly?


And here some more info:
roswtf says these are unconnected:
   * /move_base/local_costmap/obstacles
   * /move_base/local_costmap/inflated_obstacles
   * /move_base/TrajectoryPlannerROS/global_plan
   * /particlecloud

and this is a bit strange, because I see the nodes running and proper
connections in rviz:

ERROR Communication with [/move_base] raised an error: Unable to
communicate with master!
ERROR Communication with [/kinect_base_link1] raised an error: Unable to
communicate with master!
ERROR Communication with [/kinect_base_link] raised an error: Unable to
communicate with master!

ERROR The following nodes should be connected but aren't:
 * /rviz_1305470350119958706->/move_base (/move_base_simple/goal)
 * /kinect_base_link1->/rviz_1305470350119958706 (/tf)
 * /kinect_base_link1->/move_base (/tf)
 * /kinect_base_link->/move_base (/tf)
 * /kinect_base_link->/rviz_1305470350119958706 (/tf)



thanks a lot in advance
jan