ROS2 Desktop Setup for TurtleBot 4 Lite "Undock/Dock Battery Management Node"

[slowrunner]

To start my journey with the TurtleBot 4 Lite, I set up a ROS2 Desktop environment and created my first TurtleBot4/Create3 client node.

My ROS2 Desktop consists of:

• Apple Mac Mini 2018 with 3.2GHz 6-core Intel Core i7, 32GB memory
• External GPU with Radeon RX580 8GB card
• macOS Monterey 12.6.1
• VMware Fusion (Virtual Machine Layer)
• Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Desktop
• ROS2 Galactic
• and GitHub Repository slowrunner/tb4desk

Challenges:

• Could list topics but not echo topics on desktop
  Fix: set VM network adapter to bridged Ethernet with generated MAC address (bridged WiFi was the cause)
• TurtleBot4 Simulation display flashed:
  Fix: give VM 4-cores and 16GB memory, set mesa environment variables
• TurtleBot4 lite Simulation with maze world came up with TB4lite half embedded in maze obstacle
  Fix: move the TB4lite and dock to new position and save Gazebo config file

My first client node forms the basis for WaLI: Wall follower Looking for Intelligence:

• Subscribe to /battery_state
• Issue undock action goal when battery_state.percentage is above .99
• Issue rotate_angle(180 degrees) action goal when battery_state.percentage is below .27
• Issue dock action goal when battery_state.percentage is below .25
• Log datetime for all significant actions to life.log

Challenges:

• Loss of /battery_state topics after random hours of operation
  Fix: ?? Investigating - Need to set Create3 to prefer USB-C net instead of WiFi network??

Steps to Success:

My particular combination of following the TurtleBot4 getting started manual, and the Create3 doc pages confused me and my first workspace. I rebuilt with the following steps and my TurtleBot4/Create3 client node builds and runs successfully:

1. ==== Install TurtleBot 4 packages

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ros-galactic-turtlebot4-description \
ros-galactic-turtlebot4-msgs \
ros-galactic-turtlebot4-navigation \
ros-galactic-turtlebot4-node

2. ==== Install TurtleBot 4 Desktop

sudo apt install ros-galactic-turtlebot4-desktop

3. ==== Install TurtleBot 4 Simulator

• Install Dev Tools (probably already present)

sudo apt install -y \
python3-colcon-common-extensions \
python3-rosdep \
python3-vcstool

• Install sim packages

sudo apt install ros-galactic-turtlebot4-simulator ros-galactic-irobot-create-nodes

4. === Setup ROSDEP

sudo rosdep init
rosdep update

5. === BULDING A TURTLEBOT4 Node (My node is WaLI: Wall follower Looking for Intelligence)

make sure to include in <workspace>/src/<package>/package.xml:

  <depend>rclpy</depend>
  <depend>irobot_create_msgs</depend>

• run rosdep:

rosdep install --from-paths src -y --ignore-src  

• do build

colcon build --symlink-install --packages-select wali  

• add to environment

source ~/tb4desk/install/setup.bash  

• run the node:

ros2 run wali wali_node

This is the log of WaLi node running successfully today:

2022-11-23 22:03|------------ boot ------------
2022-11-24 06:58|wali_node.py| WaLI node started
2022-11-24 06:59|wali_node.py| ** WaLI Undocking: success at battery 99% **
2022-11-24 08:42|wali_node.py| ** WaLi Docking: success at battery 24% **
2022-11-24 08:54|lifelogger.dEmain| execution: 10.85