ROS Actions

Summary

ROS actions give operators the ability to send asynchronous goals to the EZRASSOR with feedback returned at each iteration of execution. For movement, this has a significant benefits over teleop in that the actions can be defined once and then executed ad infinitum for repeatable results.

Since ROS actions are asynchronous, cancel requests can be sent to the rover. This is beneficial when executing autonomous commands that may get the rover stuck or otherwise may need to be aborted.

Action Servers

The following are all of the action servers currently provided by the EZ-RASSOR software:

ezrassor_teleop_actions

This action server takes in movement, dig, and dump commands for operating a single EZ-RASSOR within the Gazebo simulation. With it, you can pre-plan a set of movements that can be repeated and tweaked within the simulation. For usage and node information, see ezrassor_teleop_actions.

ezrassor_swarm_control

This action server takes in a Point object to have any individual EZ-RASSOR navigate to the point using an A* path planning algorithm. For each robot that is spun up, a new node is created and attached to that individual robot. That makes it possible to send navigation commands to multiple robots while not having to worry about generating a path beforehand. For usage and node information, see ezrassor_swarm_control.