Roboclaw

Roboclaw is an extensible series of Roboclaw nodes for ROS

Features

• The base node "roboclaw_node" supports up to 8 Roboclaw controllers using packet serial mode
• Drive systems and odometry are decoupled from the base Roboclaw node
• A differential drive node is supported out of the box
• Written in roscpp for effecient memory usage and performance

Requirements

• ROS Kinetic/Lunar/Melodic

Nodes

roboclaw_node

Parameters

| Param | Type | Description | | :------------- |:-------------| :-----| | serial_port | string | Path to the serial port to use | | baudrate | int | Baudrate of the serial port | | roboclaws | int | Number of Roboclaw controllers in packet serial mode |

Topics

| Action | Topic | Type | | :------------- |:-------------| :-----| | publish | motor_enc_steps | roboclaw/RoboclawEncoderSteps | | subscribe | motor_cmd_vel | roboclaw/RoboclawMotorVelocity |

Notes

• When using one Roboclaw controller, configure it in packet serial mode with address 0x80. This will be motor index 0 in RoboclawEncoderSteps and RoboclawMotorVelocity.
• When using more than one Roboclaw controller, configure them in packet serial mode with 0x80 being motor index 0, 0x81 being motor index 1, and so on.

diffdrive_node

Parameters

| Param | Type | Description | | :------------- |:-------------| :-----| | steps_per_meter | string | Number of encoder steps per meter | | base_width | int | Diameter of the robots base from the center of each wheel | | swap_motors | bool | Swap motor1 with motor2 | invert_motor_1 | bool | Invert drive and odometry for motor1 | invert_motor_2 | bool | Invert drive and odometry for motor2

Topics

| Action | Topic | Type | | :------------- |:-------------| :-----| | publish | odom | Odometry | | subscribe | cmd_vel | Twist |

Planned

• Support for the NASA JPL Open Source Rover's drive system
• Exposing more of the Roboclaw's functionality via messages / services