This package is part of Robot Optimization, Scheduling, Task Execution and Routing (Ro.O.S.T.E.R.), a ROS (Robot Operating System) based open source project to develop a heterogeneous fleet management solution with task allocation, scheduling and autonomous navigation capabilities. Detailed documentation including architectural overview, installation instructions, license information and source code API documentation can be found here.

This software has been developed as part of the work at the 'Center of Design for Advanced Manufacturing' lab of TU Delft on the 'Collaborating and coupled AGV swarms with extended environment recognition' project funded by EIT Manufacturing.

This package consists of launch files to setup a multi ridgeback navigation simulation using the ROS navigation stack.

Installation and Use

This package requires installing the ridgeback simulation and navigation pacakges mentioned in the ridgeback tutorials by clearpath robotics (http://www.clearpathrobotics.com/assets/guides/kinetic/ridgeback/simulation.html)

The terminal commands for installing the above mentioned packages:

sudo apt-get install ros-melodic-ridgeback-simulator ros-melodic-ridgeback-desktop
sudo apt-get install ros-melodic-ridgeback-navigation

Also for teleoperation of the robots from terminal, install the teleop_twist_keyboard package using the following command:

sudo apt-get install ros-melodic-teleop-twist-keyboard

Additionally, this package requires multi_ridgeback_gazebo ROS package.

Clone the repository into the src folder of your workspace and run catkin_make in the toplevel directory of your workspace. You can then use the following roslaunch command straight out of the box, to start a gazebo simulation with 3 ridgebacks and rviz to command navigation goals. Additionally terminals are also launched to manually operate the robot if it is stuck.

roslaunch multi_ridgeback_nav multi_ridgeback_nav.launch