[ros-users] Use cases for ROS on ARM based computers

James Ronald james.ronald at gmail.com
Sun Jan 13 19:53:34 UTC 2013


Tully,

I'm a Robotics hobbyist and have had limited success with building and
using ROS for the Beagle Board, Panda Board and recently the RaspberryPi.
My current project is the ROSberryPiBot which targets hobbyist and such
that may be interested in experimenting with ROS in a self-contained, very
low cost robot.  Or, in the Raspberry Pi philosophy, allow hobbyists to run
through the basic ROS tutorials without worry of messing up their primary
computer.

One thing that can be a big issue is the amount of time required building
and re-building packages from source. Having a common framework that can be
used for building and sharing the various basic ROS ARM binary packages
would be helpful and/or an index of pre-built ROS ARM Linux distributions.


http://rosberrypibot.blogspot.com/

- James Ronald



On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 1:41 PM, Ian <ian.ohara at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have experience using gumstix to run fuerte under debian 6.05 at Upenn's
> Modlab [1].  We compiled ROS-base from source in place without any real
> issues, and for our purposes (using ROS for networking and data
> serialization on the gumstix, and doing the heavy lifting on more powerful
> computers) it worked well.
>
> We opted to do all compilation locally on the gumstix, which was our one
> source of frustration; the shortest compilation times were measured in
> minutes.  A cross-compiling environment would have been worth the time to
> setup.
>
> As published info becomes available about the project, I can keep
> ros-users or any SIG that gets setup updated.
>
> Ian O'Hara
>
>
> [1] http://modlabupenn.org/
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 10:21 AM, Gonçalo Cabrita <goncabrita at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Great thread!
>>
>> We've got some ODROIDs (http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/main.php)
>> on the way.
>>
>> I'll be happy to share our progress and achievements.
>>
>> We could get a page similar to the Robots page on the wiki where we can
>> add documentation for these kind of devices and share tutorials on how to
>> set the up, what are their limitations, etc.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Gonçalo Cabrita
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 1:39 AM, blackstag <blackstag at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I have done some work with rpi and base ros package will run groovy on
>>> it soon once i switch everything else over. I stopped on that one due
>>> to the crazy usb issues i was running into. I have also started the
>>> same work on the cubieboard which runs a allwinner a10 that we did
>>> back in May with rpi. With the smaller systems we have been using
>>> rosserial and looking to use a more embedded option in the future
>>> following the sig for that. I have also started work on the odroid
>>> quad core samsung processor. Once I have them building I will document
>>> it on the wiki. It is good to see WG is looking to work in this
>>> direction
>>>
>>> Jason
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 6:39 PM, Bil Morris <bill at iheartengineering.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> > We have been evaluating Embedded/ARM based platforms, our main areas of
>>> > interest at the moment are OpenWRT based routers, Android hardware
>>> > running Ubuntu [1] / (De|Rasp)bian [2], Raspberry Pi and the
>>> BeagleBone.
>>> >
>>> > On the Debian side it looks like it should be feasible [3] to build
>>> > multi-arch binaries [4] to handle most Arm platforms. For systems with
>>> > limited storage, the opkg [5] format may be useful.
>>> > ARM binaries for ROS and bloom cross compile automation would be really
>>> > helpful to speed up development.
>>> >
>>> > For the OpenWRT router, we were originally planning on using rosjs[6]
>>> > for robot management, but being able to run a full install of ROS on
>>> the
>>> > router opens up some interesting possibilities for integrating robot
>>> > status indicators. Given it's position in the network it may make sense
>>> > as a place accumulate local information. One example of this is where
>>> > there are multiple shared docking stations and a robot may want to
>>> check
>>> > if a dock is available before driving towards it. It may also be worth
>>> > looking at running something like multi-master bridging on the router
>>> > itself.
>>> >
>>> > The Nexus 7/Ubuntu tablet is part of what we are thinking about for
>>> > human robot interaction and part of our development planning for the
>>> > TurtleBot as we currently believe that by mid 2014 a currently
>>> > non-existent Tegra 5 should be able to achieve reasonable (YMMV)
>>> > performance working with point clouds and 3D sensors.
>>> >
>>> > We have been evaluating the BeagleBone and the Raspberry Pi for some
>>> > computer vision applications such as loading and unloading robots. The
>>> > BeagleBone seems to have a little better hardware for what we need [7],
>>> > however the Raspberry Pi is lower cost and seems to be somewhat
>>> popular [8].
>>> >
>>> > I'm not sure about the hardware requirements, but one thing I'm
>>> thinking
>>> > about adding to our to do list is an ARM system that just runs rviz/rqt
>>> > on a huge TV with a webpage or rosservice api to manage the subscribed
>>> > topics.
>>> >
>>> > Bill
>>> >
>>> > [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Nexus7
>>> > [2] http://apc.io/order/
>>> > [3] https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/precise/armhf
>>> > https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/precise/armel
>>> > http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/dists/precise/
>>> > [4]
>>> >
>>> http://www.cnx-software.com/2012/05/02/getting-started-with-multiarch-armel-armhf-in-ubuntu/
>>> > [5] https://code.google.com/p/opkg/
>>> > [6] http://www.ros.org/wiki/rosjs
>>> > [7]
>>> >
>>> http://section9.choamco.com/2012/07/beagleboard-vs-beagleboard-xm-beaglebone-vs-raspberry-pi/
>>> > [8] http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/3011
>>> >
>>> > On 01/12/2013 04:10 PM, Tully Foote wrote:
>>> >> Hi Everyone,
>>> >>
>>> >> There has been quite a bit of interest in running ROS on ARM
>>> >> architecture processors. I know of many people using ROS on ARM
>>> >> processors.  There is now instructions for installing ROS on the
>>> >> Raspberry Pi [1] [2] form source.  Thanks to everyone who's
>>> >> contributed to those installation instructions.
>>> >>
>>> >> There are lots of additional steps possible for the Raspberry Pi
>>> >> specifically, such as extending the debian package buiding
>>> >> infrastructure to support armhf or developing good instructions for
>>> >> cross compiling. (Compiling natively is slow but simpler.)
>>> >>
>>> >> Likewise I'm aware of several people using ROS on other ARM based
>>> >> platforms such as Gumstix, BeagleBoards and PandaBoards as well as
>>> >> others.
>>> >>
>>> >> With the number of people using ROS on these processors it would be
>>> >> great to share with the community what people are working on and where
>>> >> they would like to see things go forward.
>>> >>
>>> >> This might develop into it's own SIG going forward or potentially join
>>> >> the embedded SIG. [3]
>>> >>
>>> >> So if anyone is using ROS on ARM or would like to do so.  Please share
>>> >> your use case(s) and hopefully we can get a group of people together
>>> >> to collaborate to build up support for ROS on ARM.
>>> >>
>>> >> Tully
>>> >>
>>> >> [1] http://www.ros.org/wiki/groovy/Installation/Raspbian/Source
>>> >> [2]
>>> http://ros.org/wiki/ROSberryPi/Setting%20up%20ROS%20on%20RaspberryPi
>>> >> [3] http://www.ros.org/wiki/sig/Embedded
>>> >>
>>> >>
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