turtle_dwa

A turtlesim environment to test the Dynamic Window Approach (DWA), a local planner for mobile robots, which is part of the ROS navigation stack. DWA will be used on the Mirthe Master robot as a local planner.

Installation

First, ensure you have the ROS navigation stack installed. The navigation stack is split into several packages: nav_core, move_base, and amcl.

To create a new package with the necessary dependencies, use the following commands:

cd ~/catkin_ws/src
catkin_create_pkg turtle_dwa rospy std_msgs geometry_msgs nav_msgs turtlesim move_base

Usage

Start ROS Core

Before running any nodes, start the ROS core:

roscore

Build and Source the Workspace

Navigate to your catkin workspace, build the workspace, and source the setup file:

cd ~/catkin_ws
catkin_make
source devel/setup.bash

Launch the Simulation

Launch the turtle_dwa simulation environment:

roslaunch turtle_dwa turtle_dwa.launch

For quick build, source and launch, you can also use the following command directly:

cd ~/catkin_ws
catkin_make
source devel/setup.bash
roslaunch turtle_dwa turtle_dwa.launch

Monitor via RViz

Load a Preconfigured RViz Setup:

rviz -d ~/catkin_ws/src/turtle_dwa/config/turtle_dwa.rviz

Set a Goal for Turtle2

To set a goal for turtle2, publish a goal to the /turtle2/move_base_simple/goal topic. Here is an example command to set a goal at coordinates (9.0, 9.0):

rostopic pub /turtle2/move_base_simple/goal geometry_msgs/PoseStamped "header:
  seq: 0
  stamp:
    secs: 0
    nsecs: 0
  frame_id: 'world'
pose:
  position:
    x: 9.0
    y: 9.0
    z: 0.0
  orientation:
    x: 0.0
    y: 0.0
    z: 0.0
    w: 1.0"

Additional Notes

• Ensure that all necessary dependencies are installed and sourced properly.
• Use RViz to visualize the navigation and the costmap to debug and verify the robot's movement and obstacle avoidance.

By following these instructions, you should be able to set up and run the turtle_dwa simulation environment and test the DWA local planner with turtlesim. If you encounter any issues, make sure to check for error messages in the terminal and ensure all necessary ROS packages are correctly installed and sourced.