gradprogram2021

©Chironix, pty ltd.

This is the master repo for the Chironix 2021 Graduate Program's problem.

It Contains:

The "Finders Keepers" problem
Some helpful notes, links and hints
Build Instructions

How did I get here?

Go here

FINDERS KEEPERS

Students will create a robotic solution which can autonomously navigate the Chironix lab [An Environment unknown] to find as many of the available April tags as possible.
Grading will be based on the following criteria:
- Reliability of the solution - how often does it crash (program) and how often does it crash (the robot)
- Number of April tags identified.
- Sophistication of object identification solutions (ML/Cameras/features etc)
- Number of collisions with obstacles in the environment if any, and, unexplained behaviour vs explained behaviour
- Amount of time taken for the entire operation.

NOTES:

Chironix will supply a gazebo environment for the appropriate platform.
Finalists will have a chance to jump on a VC with Chironix Engineers to ensure smooth deployment, this session will be time limited, parties unable to get their entry deployed may be eliminated.
Conducting final rounds on our real hardware in our lab from DDDMMYY.
URDFs are in the repos.
Submit via PR.
Getting started instructions are in the folders enclosed.
ROS Start Guide
Useful Scout Documentation
Useful Jackal Documentation
Useful Husky Documentation
Gazebo Getting started & Installation

The potential deployment platforms

Clearpath Husky or Jackal, equipped with a realsense camera for odometery and a velodyne 16 for lidar data
AgileX Scout, equipped with a realsense camera for odometery and a velodyne 16 for lidar data

Build Instructions

The repo is to be built on Ubuntu 18, running ROS melodic.

To install ROS Melodic on your system, please follow the instructions here. Make sure you install the ros-melodic-desktop-full version and don't forget to initialize and update rosdep.

Now, clone this repository to your desired location and follow the following instructions. For the sake of illustration, we clone the repository to Desktop.

cd ~/Desktop
git clone https://github.com/Chironix/gradprogram2021.git
cd gradprogram2021/
rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y
catkin_make

Your catkin package for the Chironix Graduate Program should have been built. You must source the package each time before using it in a terminal :

source ~/Desktop/gradprogram2021/devel/setup.bash

Or add the setup file to your bashrc file :

echo "source ~/Desktop/gradprogram2021/devel/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc

And then restart terminal.

Now the simulation is ready to be launched. You are given a choice of 3 robots - Husky, Jackal and Scout mini. There are two versions of the world simulation -- full and lite. If your system resources are not rendering satisfactory performance of the full version, please try the lite version. The launch commands for each robot is as follows :

roslaunch husky_gazebo husky_full.launch
roslaunch husky_gazebo husky_lite.launch
roslaunch jackal_gazebo jackal_full.launch
roslaunch jackal_gazebo jackal_lite.launch
roslaunch scout_gazebo_sim scout_full.launch
roslaunch scout_gazebo_sim scout_lite.launch

Each launch file will launch the gazebo simulation, an instance of rviz and the move base navigation stack as well. Please note that you may need to customize the move base cost map parameters according to your own need.

hnqiu / gradprogram2021