Raspberry Pi Robots and custom sensors

Question

So I am extremely new to ROS, so apologies if this is this years worse question.

I have ROS installed on a Pi, which has a BrickPi shield (drives Lego motors). ROS works on the Pi as I can see my Neato Lidar data from it (pi is master with Lidar attached) I used rviz to see the Lidar data.

Aim: For the Pi to move around an area based on Lidar readings. The pi is mounted on a LEGO tracked platform (powered by the BrickPi) This can be controlled via Python

So, am I correct in thinking I need to build a BrickPi Python driver for ROS to use?

Then somehow model the robot in 3D for Rviz to display?

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Originally posted by burf2000 on ROS Answers with karma: 202 on 2016-12-07

Post score: 0

Answer 1

Yes, I think you've got the gist of it. You would want to create a BrickPi_ROS package that handles the communication between ROS and the BrickPi. Here is an examples of a similar ros driver for a motor controller.

https://github.com/smd-ros-devel/kangaroo_x2_driver

It would probably subscribe to a cmd_vel topic and publish encoder data if there is any

Then you may want to use a mapping package like gmapping to turn your LIDAR data into a occupancy map And a package like AMCL to figure out where you are in the map And then finally a package like move_base to navigate around autonomously.

Hope that helps

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Originally posted by shoemakerlevy9 with karma: 545 on 2016-12-07

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 1

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Original comments

Comment by burf2000 on 2016-12-08:
Helps? thats freaking awesome mate. I will let you know how I get on, do you do much ROS yourself?

Comment by shoemakerlevy9 on 2016-12-08:
Yes, I use ROS a lot at work :)

Comment by burf2000 on 2016-12-30:
Did you learn off the site or do you recommend anything?