pb_teleop_twist_joy

Overview

The purpose of this package is to provide a generic facility for tele-operating Twist-based ROS 2 robots with a standard joystick. It converts joy messages to velocity commands.

This node provides no rate limiting or autorepeat functionality. It is expected that you take advantage of the features built into joy for this.

Executables

The package comes with the teleop_node that republishes sensor_msgs/msg/Joy messages as scaled geometry_msgs/msg/Twist messages. The message type can be changed to geometry_msgs/msg/TwistStamped by the publish_stamped_twist parameter.

Subscribed Topics

• joy (sensor_msgs/msg/Joy)
  • Joystick messages to be translated to velocity commands.

Published Topics

• cmd_vel (geometry_msgs/msg/Twist or geometry_msgs/msg/TwistStamped)
  • Command velocity messages arising from Joystick commands.

Parameters

• require_enable_button (bool, default: true)

  • Whether to require the enable button for enabling movement.

• enable_button (int, default: 0)

  • Joystick button to enable regular-speed movement.

• enable_turbo_button (int, default: -1)

  • Joystick button to enable high-speed movement (disabled when -1).

• axis_chassis.<axis>

  • Joystick axis to use for linear movement control.
  • axis_chassis.x (int, default: 5)
  • axis_chassis.y (int, default: -1)
  • axis_chassis.z (int, default: -1)

• scale_chassis.<axis>

  • Scale to apply to joystick linear axis for regular-speed movement.
  • scale_chassis.x (double, default: 0.5)
  • scale_chassis.y (double, default: 0.0)
  • scale_chassis.z (double, default: 0.0)

• scale_chassis_turbo.<axis>

  • Scale to apply to joystick linear axis for high-speed movement.
  • scale_chassis_turbo.x (double, default: 1.0)
  • scale_chassis_turbo.y (double, default: 0.0)
  • scale_chassis_turbo.z (double, default: 0.0)

• axis_gimbal.<axis>

  • Joystick axis to use for angular movement control.
  • axis_gimbal.yaw (int, default: 2)
  • axis_gimbal.pitch (int, default: -1)
  • axis_gimbal.roll (int, default: -1)

• scale_gimbal.<axis>

  • Scale to apply to joystick angular axis.
  • scale_gimbal.yaw (double, default: 0.5)
  • scale_gimbal.pitch (double, default: 0.0)
  • scale_gimbal.roll (double, default: 0.0)

• scale_gimbal_turbo.<axis>

  • Scale to apply to joystick angular axis for high-speed movement.
  • scale_gimbal_turbo.yaw (double, default: 1.0)
  • scale_gimbal_turbo.pitch (double, default: 0.0)
  • scale_gimbal_turbo.roll (double, default: 0.0)

• inverted_reverse (bool, default: false)

  • Whether to invert turning left-right while reversing (useful for differential wheeled robots).

• publish_stamped_twist (bool, default: false)

  • Whether to publish geometry_msgs/msg/TwistStamped for command velocity messages.

• robot_base_frame (string, default: 'pb_teleop_twist_joy')

  • Frame name used for the header of TwistStamped messages and lookup transform.

• control_mode (string, default: 'manual_control')

  • Options:
  • manual_control: Publish speed directly to robot.
  • auto_control: Send lookahead goal to navigation2 to control the robot

Usage

mkdir -p ~/ros_ws/src
cd ~/ros_ws/src

git clone --recursive https://github.com/SMBU-PolarBear-Robotics-Team/pb2025_sentry_nav.git

cd ~/ros_ws
rosdep install -r --from-paths src --ignore-src --rosdistro $ROS_DISTRO -y

colcon build --symlink-install --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

Run

A launch file has been provided which has three arguments which can be changed in the terminal or via your own launch file. To configure the node to match your joystick a config file can be used. There are several common ones provided in this package (atk3, ps3-holonomic, ps3, xbox, xd3), located here: config

PS3 is default, to run for another config (e.g. xbox) use this:

ros2 launch pb_teleop_twist_joy pb_teleop_twist_joy_launch.py joy_config:='xbox'

Note: this launch file also launches the joy node so do not run it separately.

Arguments

• joy_config (string, default: 'ps3')
  • Config file to use
• joy_dev (string, default: '0')
  • Joystick device to use
• config_filepath (string, default: './config' + LaunchConfig('joy_config') + '.config.yaml')
  • Path to config files
• publish_stamped_twist (bool, default: false)
  • Whether to publish geometry_msgs/msg/TwistStamped for command velocity messages.