RoboticsND: Project #2

This repository contains the files for Udacity's Robotics Nanodegree's Second Project.

Find Udacity's Robotics Software Engineering Nanodegree here.

Project Requirements

• Design a differential drive robot using URDF with a camera and a LIDAR sensor
• Create a new world environment in Gazebo
• Create a custom robot ROS package to hold the robot, a white ball, and the world
• Create a ball_chaser ROS package to hold all C++ nodes
• Write a drive_bot C++ node that will provide a ball_chaser/command_robot service to drive the robot by controlling its linear x and angular z velocities
• Write a process_image C++ node that reads your robot’s camera image, analyzes it to determine the presence and position of a white ball

The requirements of this project were met as approved by Udacity's reviewers.

Design Process

• Designed a differential drive robot using Solidworks (STLs available inside my_robot/meshes) then exported it to URDF using Solidworks to URDF Exporter
• Tweaked URDF to fix axis and coordinate systems, added camera and LIDAR sensor to robot model
• Designed a maze world using Gazebo's Building Editor based on this maze
• Wrote C++ nodes drive_bot and process_image to drive the robot's wheels based on the position of the white ball as obtained by the latter node
• Packaged launching into a single launch file for each of the ROS packages

Screenshots

Find the following images showing the a few details of the project.

Fig.1 - Solidworks Render of Robot Model

Fig.2 - Close Up View of Robot Model in Gazebo

Fig.3 - Gazebo Maze World View

Fig.4 - Top View of Gazebo Maze World

Credits

This project was fully done by myself.