Difference between revisions of "Category:Hamster"

Revision as of 17:23, 10 March 2019

• 

  Hamster in TEDX

• 

  Hamster with Movidius

• 

  Ben Gurion Airport

Hamster system

Quick start

1. Install hamster server - multi-master configuration https://wiki.cogni.io/index.php/HamsterServer

(if your robot was shipped before January 2018 - single-master configuration)

2. Turn on robot

3. Control your agents in hamster.perspective -rqt with mouse, joystick and keyboard:

Select window with agent number:

agents 1-10 select with 1 ... 0 keyboard buttons

agents 11-20 select with shift + 1 ... shift + 0

4. See your robot in hamster.rviz

For agents 3-20 change agent number in topic names

Hamster research teams

The Hamster is being used as a research platform at various institutes

• Ben Gurion University
• Bar Ilan University
• College of Management
• Holon Institute of technology
• Mitsubishi Research lab
• Intel Innovation Lab

Hamster research papers

• On the Use of Teamwork Software for Multi-Robot Formation Control
• Maintaining Communication in Multi-Robot Tree Coverage
• Control Architecture Design for Autonomous Vehicles

Hamster models

• 

  HamsterV3

• 

  HamsterV4

• 

  HamsterV5

Robot's components

Each robots has two raspberry pi computers on board - master and slave, and a low level controller.

Master - Has a wifi connection to the hamster network, provides network access to slave. It also connects to the slave computer directly via ethernet cable.

Slave - Second computer, used primarily for GPS data broadcasting, connected to hamster network via master.

Low level controller - Arduino based board responsible for interaction with hardware components.

Operation modes

Hamster robot is capable of running mapping, localization or outdoor localization (using GPS and IMU).

Switching between modes:

In order to change the operation mode publish std_msgs/String message to /mapping_command topic, containing on e of the following strings:

• slam
• localization
• outdoor

Example: <syntaxhighlight lang="bash" line='line'> rostopic pub /mapping_command std_msgs/String "data: 'slam'" </syntaxhighlight> <syntaxhighlight lang="bash" line='line'> rostopic pub /mapping_command std_msgs/String "data: 'localization'" </syntaxhighlight>

When switching from mapping to localization mode, the map is saved by the server, and loaded for localization algorithm.

All maps saved inside ~/hamster_ws/src/hamster_server_launch/maps$

Hamster wireless network

Router

• SSID 2.4Ghz: hamster_net
• SSID 5.0Ghz: hamster_net5
• Password: hamsterHAMSTER
• Network: 10.0.2.0
• Netmask: 255.255.255.0
• Gateway: 10.0.2.138

Hamster

• User = pi
• Password = hamster

Master:

• IP: 10.0.2.n/192.168.n.1

Slave:

• IP: 192.168.n.2

n - stands for agent id, e.g agent7 will have 10.0.2.7/192.168.7.1

Low level controller

Hamster LLC connection scheme (for V4 and V5)

Description

The LLC board is responsible for interaction with hardware components such as:

• Motors (drive and steering)
• Encoders (mainly used for PID controller)
• IMU
• Battery monitoring
• Cut-off (shuts down the platform when battery goes below certain voltage)

The LLC is connected to master computer via UART (serial)

A built-in switch is also provided for the possibility of loading new firmware (voids warranty, can be provided per request)

Server

Description:

Usually runs ROS master services, it also loads and publishes the map for localization

Note: hamster robot may be configured to use local ROS master to avoid using dedicated server for this purpose

Project:

• [1]

Master

Description:

Majority of hardware is connected to the master pc, it also acts as network gateway for slave

Hardware

• WiFi
• Low level controller (via UART)
• LiDar (USB)
• Ethernet (to slave)

Slave

Description

GPS data broadcaster

Hardware

• GPS
• Ethernet (to master)