Overview

The docking service detects and guides the robot to its charging station. The service is based on detection of the ‘o’ letters of the ‘ROBOT STATION’ tag in the robot camera image. Prior to use, the method has to establish the docking station reference frame relative to the robot position.

To install

Dependecies are: * libgsl0-dev * libblas-dev

sudo apt-get install libgsl0-dev libblas-dev

To setup:

  1. Print the station tag on a A4 paper. Do not let the printer to resize it.
  2. Center the robot at the charging station.
  3. Display the robot camera image and fix the tag on the wall approximattelly in the image center.
  4. Tell the system to measure its position relatively to the charger by calling a the calibration routine via actionlib. This can be done using a GUI as follows:
rosrun actionlib axclient.py /chargingServer

Then in the Goal textfield complete as follows:

Command: calibrate
Timeout: 1000

And then press the SEND GOAL button.

The robot should move its eyelids to indicate progress of the calibration process.

To use:

  • Just point the robot approximatelly in the direction of the charging station and call the node via actionlib as above, substituting charge for calibrate.
  • To leave the charging station, use undock instead.
  • Set the lightEBC parameter to the name of an EBC port you have attached a light to, e.g. Port0_12V_Enabled.

Original page: https://github.com/strands-project/scitos_apps/blob/hydro-devel/scitos_docking/README.md