README.md

Ball Chaser Project

This is the second ROS project from the Udacity Robotics Software Engineer course.

Overview

The robot's task is to chase a white ball and stop if either the ball is outside of the robot's camera view or if it gets too close to it to avoid a collision.

License

The source code is released under an MIT license.

Author: Andres Campos

Both my_robot and ball_chaser packages have been tested under ROS Kinetic on Ubuntu 16.04. This code is for personal learning and any fitness for a paticular purpose is disclaimed.

Installation

Installation from Packages

To install all packages from this repository as Debian packages use

sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-...

Or use rosdep:

sudo rosdep install --from-paths src

Building from Source

Dependencies

• Robotics Operating System (ROS) (middleware for robotics)

sudo rosdep install --from-paths src

Building

To build from source, clone the latest version from this repository into your catkin workspace and compile this package using

cd catkin_workspace/src
git clone https://github.com/acampos074/Ball_Chaser_Project.git
cd ../
catkin_make

Usage

Navigate to the /src/scripts directory, and launch the shell script:

./chase_ball.sh

Launch files

• world.launch: Gazebo launch and world file
• ball_chaser.launch: The robot's ball chaser algorithm

Nodes

drive_bot

Published Topics

• /cmd_vel (geometry_msgs/Twist)

  Contains the linear and angular velocities to move the robot

Services

• /ball_chaser/command_robot

  Publishes linear and angular velocities to the robot's wheel joints and provides a response message to the client containing the requested velocities.

process_image

Subscribed Topics

• /camera/rgb/image_raw (sensor_msgs/Image)

  Reads the image data of an RGB camera

Services

• /ball_chaser/command_robot

  Calls the server and sends the linear and angular velocities from the process_image_callback function.

Bugs & Feature Requests

Please report bugs and request features using the Issue Tracker