Introduction to Chefbot- a DIY mobile robot and its hardware configuration

In Chapter 4, Using the ROS MoveIt! and Navigation Stack we have discussed some mandatory requirements for interfacing a mobile robot with ROS navigation package. The following are the mandatory requirements:

• Odometry source: Robot should publish its odometry/position data with respect to the starting position. The necessary hardware components that provide odometry information are wheel encoders, IMU, and 2D/3D cameras (visual odometry).

• Sensor source: There should be a laser scanner or a 3D vision sensor sensor, which can act as a laser scanner. The laser scanner data is essential for map building process using SLAM.

• Sensor transform using tf: The robot should publish the transform of the sensors and other robot components using ROS transform.

• Base controller: The base controller is a ROS node, which can convert a twist message from Navigation stack to corresponding motor velocities.

  

  Figure 1: Chefbot prototype

We...