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Starting up and shutting down HERO

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PetervDooren edited this page Dec 7, 2021 · 2 revisions

HERO Basic rules

AMIGO's natural habitat is the TU/e testlab. Please note that the testlab is used for testing, it is not a storage room! Before starting, the following items (at location) should be acquired:

  • HERO
  • Emergency switches
    • Wireless
    • Wired (on HERO's back)
    • When HERO's hardware is enabled (emergency button released) 1 person is responsible for holding the wireless emergency button. This person must never leave HERO unattended.
  • DevPC or PC with communication to HERO (there is a PC in the lab) (for demos you can take a DevPC and router from the lab)

Starting up HERO

  • Open the lid on HERO's back. turn on the main power switch. Close the lid again.
  • Switch on hero1 (the robot itself) by holding down the power button for 3 seconds.
  • carefully remove hero2 (the backpack laptop) from hero's back. Open up the laptop and turn it on. You do not need to log in. Close the laptop and place it back in the rack. secure it with the velcro straps.
  • A number of ''standard'' nodes are autostarted along with a roscore on hero1. This contains:
    • webui
    • diagnostics: checks on battery status etc.
    • text to speech: allows hero to talk
    • battery notifier: makes hero speak when battery level of hero1 is low.
  • If HERO's head display shows two battery levels, the computers are properly connected.
  • Start the dashboard by clicking the dashboard icon or by entering hero-dashboard in a terminal.
    • It has proven to be convenient to have the dashboard always on the visible workspace. Therefore, right-click on the titlebar of the dashboard and tick "always on visible workspace".
    • The dashboard contains:
      • Battery status indicator
  • Start the hardware by going to hero1 (using sshhero1) and typing hero-start --screen. You will see the message, waiting until servo is not ready. Press the emergency stop button. You will now see the message waiting until servo is ready. Release the emergency stop button. Now that you have proven you know how to use the emergency stop the hardware will start. After a while the robot will assume a default pose.

Now HERO is ready to go: it listens to joint reference trajectories and will execute these. Now you can continue to the middleware tutorial.

Shutting Down HERO

  • Make sure that every terminal is stopped with Ctrl+c.
  • Shut down hero2, in a terminal on hero2 type sudo halt -p or unstrap the laptop and shut down the laptop manually.
  • Shut down hero1, in a terminal on hero1 type hero-shutdown. This is neccessary properly to shut down the virtual machine running on hero1. When HERO's screen goes blue you may long press the power button to shut down hero1.
  • After hero1 is shut down, open up the lid on HERO's back and turn off the main power switch.
  • If you have not done so already turn off the charger of hero1.

Charging HERO

HERO consists of two computers each with its own battery. You can watch both battery levels via the head display or via the dashboard on your devPC.

  • To charge hero1 you must plug in the charger and turn the charger on. Hero1's charging port is below the backpack laptop. The red mark on the charger should face upward when plugging in.
  • To charge hero2 you only need to plug in the charger. The charging port is on the back of the laptop (same side as the ethernet cable)

Further Tutorials

Usually, it is also necessary to start the middle-level planning and control systems and possibly a challenge. Hereto, go to Middleware

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