Navigation of Automated Robot using ROS(Robotic Operating System)

Navigation is the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another. It typically uses a GPS navigation device to acquire position data to locate the user on a road in the unit’s map database. Using the road database, the unit can give directions to other locations along roads also in its database. CARiN Database Format (CDF), Physical Storage Format (PSF) these are some of standard format of storing navigation graph. PSF is used by leading companies like BMW, Volkswagen, Daimler, Renault etc. for navigation. There are several other navigation methods which are being used Radio navigation, Radar navigation, Satellite navigation. These navigation system may use But what if we want to navigate some automated machine inside house, hotel, manufacturing plant etc. The above mentioned methods will not work for such application. For such indoor navigation applications, there are few ways to implement navigation indoor.

One of them is, to make a line along the path which we want to follow and make a line follower machine, but this is traditional way of carrying out task. That has lot of constrains and it is costly to build up a path and to maintain it regularly. Other way of indoor navigation is to prepare log file that has sequence of commands (bagfile in terms of ROS) that navigate the machine towards particular locations. We can make such bagfiles for each and every probable destination and play the bagfile for individual locations. In second approach, making bagfiles for each and every location is tedious work and also situation may not be same every time we play bagfile. So, there are more chances of failure t reach destination in this approach.

ROS(Robotic Operating System) is a tool which help us to carry out this task. ROS provides packages for different task. ROS provides platform to use data stored in database to operate a machine(to give them command sequence).This database can be created by AutoCAD file of particular building or manufacturing plant. This approach is more generic than former two approaches as by just changing AutoCAD file we can change the database and hence command sequence. This way does not require any track or recorded files for each locations. This way is easy to maintain, easy to modify and more robust.

Application:
Hotel Room Service: If AutoCAD file of hotel can be mapped to database, We can make robot to serve the order to particular room number just by giving destination location.
Surveillance: If we want to surveil some indoor area or find out bomb or terrorist hidden in some internal building we can make use of such type of robot.
Loading/Unloading process in manufacturing plant is another application where this can be used and lot more applications.
Outcome of our Project :

Understanding about Log File :

I’m grateful to my friend Shivag Ghetia for giving such a great design to this Robo.