[ros-users] remote control (kbd / joystick / etc.) (brice rebsamen)

[Jenkins, Odest Chadwicke]

Hi Ken,

I think you make a very good point about developing a teleop_mobile
stack.  That would certainly be a welcomed contribution.  I also agree
that asking Willow to take this on is not the best use of time and
effort.

A larger point I am making is that we are starting to see more
reinvention and refragmentation among the efforts of the ROS
community.  I would attribute this circumstance to the lack of a
global picture of ROS that people (new and established) in ROS can
understand.  We often have to climb up the learning curve by scouring
the more detail-oriented content of the wiki and various repositories.
 This could be a dealbreaker for many types of people we would like to
bring into the ROS community: app-level developers, people who design
systems with usability and value in mind, etc.

I think the answer to Brice's question (and similar questions) should
be more obvious.  By an order of magnitude, ROS has been a great
contribution to robotics, as an applications-layer protocol, message
structure, and development environment.  However, ROS is still very
far from enabling robots to provide value for real users and app
developers.  More guidance from the ROS leadership as well as
discussion with the current ROS community would help in broadening the
ROS community in the future.

(Brice, apologies for the threadjacking)

-Chad

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 4:31 PM, Ken Conley <kwc at willowgarage.com> wrote:
> If someone was willing to coordinate/maintain a "teleop_mobile" stack,
> we would happily accept/anoint it.  As Brian notes, the difficulty is
> in ensuring that such a 'general' teleoperation package generically
> controls a variety of robots.  We would not be able to do such a stack
> ourselves (at least for Electric) as our post-ICRA todo list is a bit
> too much right now.
>
> It sounds like there are (at least) two good starting points for
> packages to include.  For keyboard, the stack that Chad mentions:
>
> http://www.ros.org/wiki/teleop_twist_keyboard
>
> And for joystick, we have our teleoperation package we use with the TurtleBot:
>
> http://www.ros.org/wiki/turtlebot_teleop
>
> The joystick case is a bit more difficult as you also have to
> parameterize a bit on the joystick.
>
> Our expectation for a maintainer would be to coordinate the community
> to get good documentation in place, and also coordinate with the
> community to test across multiple robot bases.
>
>  - Ken
>
> On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 9:17 AM, Jenkins, Odest Chadwicke
> <odest_jenkins at brown.edu> wrote:
>> Hi Brice,
>>
>> I believe you are correct in that base movement control has been
>> reinvented several times over in ROS.  We wrote our own a while back,
>> but there are probably other quality movement controllers across the
>> ROS space:
>>
>>  http://www.ros.org/wiki/teleop_twist_keyboard
>>
>> teleop_twist_keyboard was based on the old playerjoy utility from
>> Player, which includes a stop command and has limited handling of key
>> press/release events.  We often use teleop_twist_keyboard for the
>> Create, AR.Drone, and PR2 (as in the following video):
>>
>>  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-9sDNnGtIs
>>
>> I think your post is great reminder that the ROS community could
>> benefit from a clearer organization of packages, messages, and
>> functionality in ROS.  Such a clear organization does not seem likely
>> to happen organically without some guidance from the ROS leadership.
>>
>> -Chad
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>