Hexapod ROS revisited

[KevinO]

Hi,

I had understood, though might be wrong, that there were certain timing advantages from running the gait code on a micro controller as opposed to a single board computer like the XU4, but possibly those advantages are overstated. Interested in others views on their practical experience here?

The reason I have it structured in its current way is so SLAM and pointclouds are as accurate as possible. Telemetry is spot on in gazebo and Rviz to what is happening on the actual robot. If you offload you will get some drift. The stack is completely updated to latest dynamixel libraries protocol 1 and protocol 2 are both options. Aside from adding the other gaits there isn't much more that needs to be done to the stack. It has outgoing and incoming telemetry, odometry, joint states and velocity. It's also been tested on three custom hexapods as well as the phoenix. I should push up my fork for the latest ROS version just for people who are not aware what the new package names are though. I also have a protocol 2 version that is hardcoded to take advantage of all the features it supply's. I could push that fork up too.

[CreedyNZ]

The reason I have it structured in its current way is so SLAM and pointclouds are as accurate as possible. Telemetry is spot on in gazebo and Rviz to what is happening on the actual robot. If you offload you will get some drift. The stack is completely updated to latest dynamixel libraries protocol 1 and protocol 2 are both options. Aside from adding the other gaits there isn't much more that needs to be done to the stack. It has outgoing and incoming telemetry, odometry, joint states and velocity. It's also been tested on three custom hexapods as well as the phoenix. I should push up my fork for the latest ROS version just for people who are not aware what the new package names are though. I also have a protocol 2 version that is hardcoded to take advantage of all the features it supply's. I could push that fork up too.

Hi Kevin,

After poking about with a few of the different options over the last few days, I totally agree that the current stack works brilliantly. So when faced with the choice of either starting with a nice gait and then trying to build up proper telemetry, odometry etc or starting with a great foundation of a working stack and then adding in a few fancy features, the later wins every time.

Would be great to take a look at your latest fork if you have the time.

I did stumble across the web interface and telemetry by dmweis/Hopper_ROS which looked interesting. After a few version challenges with rosnodejs, it's now up and running, so will try to link that functionality in too.

[KevinO]

oooohhh I like that. Good find.

[adamto99]

oooohhh I like that. Good find.

What I have been thinking about doing for awhile but keep getting side tracked, is to take another go at it. Probably this time with the Hexapod with XL430W250 servos.

[Old_Botmaker]

Hi CreedyNZ,
I'm planning to incorporate the Odroid N2 as a ROS master (preferably headless) in my current project. Did you have any problems installing and running ROS with your application? Which versions of Ubuntu and ROS do you use/recommend?