Autonomous Warehouse Management Robot (AuWaMaR)

Overview

This project is developed for Warehouse Management wherein a Turtlebot3 Waffle Pi is employed to transport packages from one location to another. The robot detects the location of the package from the Aruco marker and will drop the package to a user defined location.Turtlebot3 uses OpenManipulator for its pick and place operation, and would be using A-star algorithm to plan its path.

Technical Presentation
A brief Technical Presentation of the project can be found here

Development Team

• Yashaarth Todi is Robotics Graduate student at University of Maryland, College Park.
• Suyash Yeotikar is Robotics Graduate student at University of Maryland, College Park.
• Gautam Balachandran is Robotics Graduate student at University of Maryland, College Park.

AIP

The development team has followed AIP process. The link to AIP sheet can be found here.
The AIP planning and review sheet used by the team can be be found here.

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Dependencies

• The project uses Ubuntu 16.04
• The project uses Kinetic version of ROS. To install, follow the link
• The project uses catkin build system, To install, follow the link
• The project uses Google Test framework for Unit Testing.

The following ROS packages are used in the project:

• gmapping
• om_with_tb3 (OpenManipulator with Turtlebot3)
• cv_bridge
• open_manipulator_msgs
• open_manipulator_libs
• aruco
• roslib
  Ensure the above packages are installed before running the project.

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Building and Running the project

Build

1. Create a catkin workspace
   mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src (Skip this step if you have an exisitng catkin worksapce)
   cd ~/catkin_ws/
catkin_make
2. Source the new setup files
   source ./devel/setup.bash
3. Clone the repository
   cd src/
git clone https://github.com/Ytodi31/warehouse_robot.git
4. Build the project
   cd ..
catkin_make
5. To install custom service
   catkin_make install

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Run

The program can be started with following the steps below:

• In terminal 1, the model Turtlebot3 is exported and the launch file brings up the robot in the environment.
• In terminal 2, the commands start the software module to run the robot.
• In terminal 3, the user provides the goal point to the robot using service caller.

1. Terminal 1
   source ./devel/setup.bash
export TURTLEBOT3_MODEL=${TB3_MODEL}
export GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH=/home/ytodi31/warehouse_robot/src/warehouse_robot/data/models
roslaunch warehouse_robot final.launch\

2. Terminal 2
   source ./devel/setup.bash
rosrun warehouse_robot warehouseRobot

3. Terminal 3
   source ./devel/setup.bash
rosrun rqt_service-caller rqt_service_caller
   Navigate service caller to /user_input. Here the goal point will have to be provided by the user which is of the geometry_msg/Pose.

By default, the recording is off. The rosbag will record all topic except topics related from camera. It can be turned on by passing an argument in Terminal when doing roslaunch. A sample is shown below : roslaunch warehouse_robot final.launch recordBag:=true

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Demo

Left image shows the robot in the Gazebo and Rviz environment. Right image shows the robot using Gmapping to get robot localisation in Rviz environment.

A video of the robot at work can be found here.

Expectation

On launching and running the project, you should see the robot move towards the box having aruco marker and then move towards the goal pose mentioned by the user. The robot will move from its start point only if the Astar algorithm was able to generate the path while avoiding obstacles. The robot will move after reaching the pickup point only if it picks up the box succesfully.

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Unit Testing

The module makes use of Level 1 Testing - Unit testing with Gtest and Level 2 Testing - Integration testing with rostest.

Building the test

To build the tests, run the following command:
cd ~/catkin_ws/
source ./devel/setup.bash
catkin_make test

Running the test

To run the tests and view the results of the test
catkin_make run_tests

Alternatively,

• The tests can be runned using a launch file
  roslaunch warehouse_robot allTestWarehouseRobot.test

• The tests can be runned as a node
  Terminal 1:
  roscore
  Terminal 2:
  rosrun warehouse_robot allTestWarehouseRobot

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License disclaimer

The project is released under BSD 3-Clause license and the preamble can be found below:

BSD 3-Clause License Copyright (c) 2019, Yashaarth Todi All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
3. Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.