Getting Started

To get started with the robot you need to make sure that you have the following dependencies installed on your pc:

  • ROS Melodic

  • Ubuntu 18.04

Note

You may prefer to use Docker to containerize the development environment. If you are interested in using Docker, please refer to the Docker section.

Robot startup

To start up the robot, please refer to this image:

Rear IO panel of the robot with labels.

  1. Rotate the power switch (2) to the ON position.

  2. The CPU button (3) will turn green when the onboard computer is powered on.

  3. Connect a monitor, keyboard and mouse to the onboard computer using the HDMI and USB ports (7).

  4. The robot will boot up and the robot’s computer will automatically start ROS and the robot’s packages. For this automatic startup sequence please refer to the Automatic Startup of ROS section.

  5. Once the robot is booted up, you can see the robot’s manual on the desktop. Please read this manual carefully before proceeding.

  6. At this point, you can turn on the provided PS4 controller by pressing the PS button. The controller will automatically connect to the robot’s computer. To drive the robot, you must keep the R1 button preessed. To activate the omnidirectional drive, press o, and you can increase/decrese the speed using the triangle and cross buttons respectively.

Robot Network setup

  1. Connect to the robot’s wifi network. The robot’s wifi network is called shl00-210420ab and the password is R0b0tn1K.

  2. Add the hostname and IP of your PC to the robot’s /etc/hosts file. This is necessary for the robot to be able to communicate with your PC. You can do this using vim or nano:

sudo vim /etc/hosts

or

sudo nano /etc/hosts

When inside the file, add the following line to the end of the second section of the file:

<your_ip> <your_pc_hostname>

This is important such that the robot can resolve your hostname to your IP address. You can find your IP address by running the following command:

hostname -I

Note

To use SSH, you must deactivate the firewall on the robot. You can do this by running the following command:

sudo ufw disable

Even though it says that it is disabled after reboots, it is still active after a reboot. I have yet to find a solution to this problem.

Host Setup

  1. Add the robot’s hostname and IP to your PC’s /etc/hosts file. The robots hostname and IP is as stated in the manual:

192.168.0.200 shl00-210420ab

  1. Now you should be able to ping the robot from your PC:

ping shl00-210420ab

And you can even list the topics being published by the robot:

rostopic list

What is next

  • Now that you have the robot up and running, you can start developing your own packages for the robot. You can also use the provided packages to control the robot. Please refer to the Packages section for more information on the packages that are installed on the robot.

  • For information regarding the automated startup process of the robot, please refer to the Automatic Startup of ROS section.

  • It is recommended to use a containerized environment on your host machine to developping code for the robot, for more information regarding this, please refer to the Docker section.

  • In case of any issues with the current setup of the robot, you can see the changelog for the robot in the Changelog section.