Chapter 3: Chefbot

[neuronet]

The final part of Chapter 3 involves installing Joseph's chefbot packages, which is basically a fork of turtlebot. There are three packages you need to install: chefbot_gazebo, chefbot_description, and chefbot_bringup.

To install the first two, I basically followed the instructions on pages 75 and 78, respectively. Joseph doesn't discuss how to install chefbot_bringup, but it is necessary to run the code in this chapter. I installed it using the following:

Code:

catkin_create_pkg chefbot_bringup actionlib depthimage_to_laserscan geometry_msgs move_base_msgs nav_msgs openni_launch robot_pose_ekf robot_state_publisher roscpp rospy std_msgs tf

Then copy all the folders from the downloaded chefbot_bringup package into the constructed chefbot_bringup folder.

Note I had to first install openni_launch before running catkin_make:

Code:


 sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-openni-launch

Once you've got all these installed, you can then run the code in the section 'Simulating Chefbot in a hotel environment' , which describes how you can run code for either turtlebot or chefbot. But there are mistakes, and it is very confusing at parts because of this. For one, where it says chefbot_empty_world.launch, you should enter chefbot_hotel_world.launch.

The commands on page 88, for chefbot, should all be:

Code:

roslaunch chefbot_gazebo chefbot_hotel_world.launch  
roslaunch chefbot_bringup keyboard_teleop.launch
roslaunch chefbot_gazebo gmapping_demo.launch
roslaunch chefbot_bringup view_navigation.launch

These will let you run the mapping protocol discussed on pages 88-89. Be sure to source your setup scripts and run them all in separate terminals.

Also, when you try to run the navigator (p 90) you use the command:

Code:

roslaunch chefbot_bringup view_navigation.launch

But you will also probably notice, that no matter how good the map is that you made, the thing is just not very good. My hunch is that this is because there are tons of parameters that need to be set that we'd need to dig in and study. Either this will be done later in the book when we start dealing with real robots, or not. In either case, I'll figure it out then as I'm ready to start building this robot, and sort of tired of trying to decipher this code. When it is important I will do it. For now...let's build it.