November 2014 Archives

ROS Korea users meetup, seminar, and tutorial

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From Jihoon via ros-users@

Hello
      everyone,

There
      will be ROS Korea users seminar & meetup in Seoul, Korea on
      December 21, hosted by OROCA, one of largest korean robotics
      community. 

      The seminar will cover overview for beginners, navigation, moveit,
      UAV, and community briefly by speakers from various groups in
      Korea.

Also
          I hope to hang out with other users after seminar since it is
          first ROS event in Korea. So please drop by in the evening. :)

For more info see(in Korean) : http://cafe.naver.com/openrt/7283
For English info : Email me(jihoonlee.in@gmail.com)

In addition to the seminar there will be a ROS Tutorial. Here are some details about ROS tutorial.


Tentative Date : 2014/12/22
Time : 13:00 ~ 18:00
Location : TBD
Expected # of participants : 30~40
Organiser : Yoonseok Pyo(passionvirus@gmail.com), Jihoon Lee(jihoonlee.in@gmail.com)
Registration : e-mail to passionvirus@gmail.com
Contents:
  * ROS environment setup
  * ROS commands, pub/sub/srv
  * How to integrate sensors
  * SLAM and navigation using kobuki
  * How to write turtlebot rapps

Fully in Korean
Free of charge
From Daiki Maekawa via ros-users@

Hi Everyone,

We held ROS JAPAN Users Group meetup as NEXTAGE Hackathon in KAWADA Robotics Inc. on November 8 2014.

We developed the function of obstacle avoidance behavior, stereo camera, and sample code for NEXTAGE.

?Demonstration movie



?Please see the photos of this meetup

See the links below for the presentation slides of this meetup.

A rosbag implementation in Java

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From Aaron Schiffman via @ros-users

Dear ROS-Users,

I've created a rosbag writer implementation for Java, and posted it to a new BitBucket repository. It should be functional for writing a rosbag format 2.0 none compression rosbag in Android or Java ROS implementations (Client or Server). If your interested the source repository is located at:
 
 
 
 
 
 
aaron_sims / jrosbag / source / -- Bitbucket
Source Branch master Check out branch jrosbag /
Preview by Yahoo
 
How to use the Bag class:
  1. Initialize the org.happy.artist.rmdmia.utilities.ros.bag.Bag class.
  2. Call bag.start(OutputStream os, Bag.CHUNK_COMPRESSION_NONE)); // Where os is the OutputStream you intend to write the file. Examples could be a FileOutputStream, or a network output stream that writes the file to Google Drive, or Dropbox (just examples).
  3. Call bag.addConnectionHeader(char[] topic, int conn, char[] connection_header_hex); for each new connection header on connection handshake. int conn is a unique int connection id chosen for the connection (might be a good idea to iterate through topic ids to create an int array, or other mechanism to chose a unique int. connection_header_hex will be the ROS Serialized Message in the connection header.
  4. Call bag.addMessage(long time, int conn, char[] message_data_hex); Pass in the long time, associated connection header int conn id, and the ROS serialized message to add to the rosbag file.
This Java code is poorly documented, however, I wanted to share it with ROS Community for Java/Android ROS clients that want to record rosbag files. Good luck using it. Releasing under Apache 2.0 license.

I wish I had more time to clean up the code better, and if you have questions or want to contribute send me a message.

Thanks,

Aaron 
From Anis Koubaa via ros-users@

We have updated the tutorial on adding a global path planner as plugin in ROS. We have added testing using RVIZ.
The general tutorial is available on ROS Wiki site in this link

A more specific tutorial that shows how to add a real genetic algorithm planner is presented in this tutorial page

It is possible to work with other path planning algorithms. We implemented the iPath C++ library that provides the implementation of several path planners including A*, GA, local search and some relaxed version of A* and Dijkstra (much faster that A* and Dijkstra).  More will be added soon on Google Code. 

The iPath library is available as open source on Google Code under the GNU GPL v3 license. The library was extensively tested under different maps including those provided in this benchmark and other randomly generated maps
A tutorial on how to use iPath simulator is available on this link

Credits particularly go to Maram Al-Ajlan (Master Student at Al-Imam Mohamed bin Saud University, Saudi Arabia) and Imen Chaari (PhD student at Manouba University Tunisia) for their efforts in implementing the algorithms and integration to ROS. 

If you have any suggestions or questions about tools or tutorials, please contact me. 

Anis

Toyota HSR Hackathon assisted by TORK

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Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) hosted a 2-day hackathon on their HSR
(Human Support Robot) on October 23th and 24th in Tokyo. TORK assisted
the event and the software.

HSR has been developed as an elderly care for domestic situations as
well as in medical facilities. This time TMC invited researchers and
students from institutes in Japan. 15 participants got a hands-on
experience, tried out making small tasks to let the mobile-manipulator
robot interact with human, and had fun.

All of the higher-end functionalities such as self-localization,
vision-based collision avoidance, motion planning and so on are
available via a de-facto standard opensource robotics framework ROS
(Robot Operating System) (that is, as previously announced). It also
comes with script language interface so that it doesn't require
developers to be well acquainted with ROS.

With the feedback from the attendees this time TMC expects to boost
the development in the future.

A write up of the event with photos can be found here

Reference: Announcement on TMC Facebook page (in Japanese)

ROS MAV SIG Call for Participation

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ROS Aerial Vehicle Users,


We'd like to invite you to participate in an effort to develop a standard set of messages for communicating within robotics components on Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs). At the IROS workshop on MAV's (proceedings) this fall it was identified that the MAV community has many different implementations of the same capabilities. They are often all closely related and are almost compatible but rarely is it easy to switch between different implementations, or use different implementations together. From that discussion it was proposed to work toward building up a common way to communicate and enable the MAV community to collaborate most effectively.

To make this happen we have setup a mailinglist and wiki pages to be a place to coordinate this effort (MAV SIG, mailing list). If you are interested in this topic we ask that you join, listen and participate so that we can get as broad a spectrum of voices as possible.


We have chosen the ROS SIG format as it has proven effective at developing standard messages which are used by many people every day. ROS SIG's are relatively unstructured and allow adaptation for differences in each community and process.


We plan to use the ROS .msg format as a way to formalize the messages, since it is a relatively compact way to express messages which has representations in many languages. The most important part of the process will not be the actual msg file that comes out, but the datatypes for which people can rely on being isomorphic when transitioning between systems.


Having common datatypes will allow us to have better modularity and interoperability. As an example from the ROS ecosystem, there are 10+ different laser scanner drivers in the ROS ecosystem and 18+ different camera drivers (ROS sensors). Because these drivers all use a standard set of messages a user of those sensors can switch which sensor they are using on their system, or deploy systems with different sensors and the rest system will continue to operate without modifications. There are more complicated examples such as the navigation stack which has a standard set of messages for sending commands and providing feedback. This same interface has been used for differential drive, holonomic, free flying, and even walking robots.


There are already dozens of MAV related ROS packages released and we hope that developing these standard messages can help coordinate the efforts of the many contributors already working on aerial vehicles in ROS.


If you would like to know more please check out the SIG (LINK). if you're at all interested please join the process. We've started a thread at here to kick off the process.  


Tully Foote (OSRF), Lorenz Meier (ETHZ / CVG, PX4), Markus Achtelik (ETHZ / ASL).

Software Engineer/PhD opening at Fraunhofer IPA

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From Florian Weißhardt via ros-users@

Position: Software Engineer, possibility to obtain PhD degree

Location: Fraunhofer IPA, Stuttgart, Germany

Experience: Strong skills in software design and C/C++ development and rich experience in ROS development

Finding solutions to organizational and technological challenges, particularly within the production environment of industrial enterprises. That, in a nutshell, is the key focus of the research and development work carried out at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA. With 14 individual departments engaged in the fields of Corporate Organization, Automation and Surface Engineering, our R&D projects aim to enhance production processes and make products more cost-effective and environmentally friendly by identifying and exploiting the potential for automation and streamlining at clients' companies.

The Fraunhofer IPA department for robot and assistive systems develops service robots for various application fields (e.g. domestic, inspection, logistics, production assistance, manufacturing, etc.) with the goal of reliable, robust and safe service of these robots in everyday environments. These applications require complex software systems including navigation, planning, perception and manipulation for dynamic and changing environments and intuitive human-robot interaction.

The position covers the development of concepts and tools to reduce integration effort and simplify application development for these complex robotic systems in the frame of public funded national and EU projects. The transfer of the results to industry by organizing workshops, publishing articles relevant magazines and exhibiting demonstrators at fairs and conferences is part of the job description as well.

You have completed your master or diploma degree with excellent results and are interested in interdisciplinary research with high-tech robots like Care-O-bot or KUKA iiwa. You could already gather experience in scientific working and optimally already presented your first results at an international conference. You are confident in software architectures and software engineering and have practical experiences with the development of robot applications in ROS.

We offer you a highly interesting and diverse work environment with both contact to top robotics researchers and industry. In addition to obtaining a phd degree, the position encompasses early transfer of project and staff responsibility. For the implementation and validation of your ideas, we offer exceptionally equipped laboritories and test environments.

Qualifications/Requirements:

  • Rich experience in ROS development
  • A Master/Diploma degree from a top university in computer science, robotics or software engineering
  • Strong skills software design and C/C++ development
  • Proficient oral and written English skills

Advantageous are:

  • Experience with model-driven engineering approaches
  • Oral and written German skills

Please include the following documents in your application:

  • Cover letter that expresses your motivation and (research) goals
  • CV
  • Transcripts of all obtained degrees (including scholar education)
  • References and certificates relevant to the position

Please send your application to martina.goetzner@ipa.fraunhofer.de referring to position IPA-2014-109.

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