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RBE3002: Unified Robotics IV: Navigation, Mapping, and Planning

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

2015

01 Background

RBE3002: Unified Robotics IV: Navigation, Mapping, and Planning at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (2015). This course covered autonomous navigation including occupancy grids, path planning algorithms, and SLAM. We used a Turtlebot platform running Ubuntu 14.04 with ROS, featuring a Roomba base and Xbox Kinect for perception, to navigate and map unknown environments.

02 Photos

Photos from the navigation and mapping lab.

The platform of this course was using the Turtlebot seen here. It is a Ubuntu 14.04 Laptop running Robot Operating System (ROS) on a Roomba Base with Xbox Kinect Vision.

Showing Occupancy Grid, where Black is showing a definite object. The green is a "buffer zone" where we expand the known obstacles to avoid. Gray spaces are open and navigable.

Here occupancy grid is expanded to at least 2-squares away from all known obstacles.

One of my team members, Beth Martino, programming the laptop in the field. The room to be navigated has 3-fold Poster boards to create an abstract room. This tests our ability to navigate as opposed to doing a traditional square or anything.

My other team member, Will Manning, observing the Turtlebot's Vision in front of a known obstacle.

Panoramic shot of WPI's Robot Pits including the room we were working in.