Package Summary

A ROS package that automatically configures a swarm robot simulator, aiming the simulation of large-scale swarms and minimizing the computational cost, with homogeneous and heterogeneous robots, different perceptions systems, to the main tasks of robot swarm.

Maintainer status: maintained
Maintainer: Vivian Cremer Kalempa <vivian.kalempa AT udesc DOT br>
Author: Vivian Cremer Kalempa <vivian.kalempa AT udesc DOT br>, André Schneider de Oliveira <andreoliveira AT utfpr DOT edu DOT br>
Source: git https://github.com/VivianCremerKalempa/swarm_stage_ros (branch: catkin)
Developed at the Federal University of Technology - Parana (UTFPR)

Contents

Package Summary
Overview
Installation

Overview

A playlist with example applications of the system is available on YouTube:

Details can be found in this paper:

@INPROCEEDINGS{KalempaTeixeiraOliveiraFabro2018,

author={V. Cremer Kalempa and M. A. Simões Teixeira and A. Schneider de Oliveira and J. A. Fabro},
booktitle={2018 Latin American Robotic Symposium, 2018 Brazilian Symposium on Robotics (SBR) and 2018 Workshop on Robotics in Education (WRE)},
title={Intelligent Dynamic Formation of the Multi-Robot Systems to Cleaning Tasks in Unstructured Environments and with a Single Perception System},
year={2018},
pages={71-76},
doi={10.1109/LARS/SBR/WRE.2018.00022},
month={Nov}}

Installation

The swarm_stage_ros package can be installed on your workspace:

cd /home/user/catkin_ws/src git clone https://github.com/VivianCremerKalempa/swarm_stage_ros cd .. catkin_make

To run your package, you just need this command:

roslaunch swarm_stage_ros swarm_stage.launch

Note that roslaunch starts ROS automatically.

At the end of processing, two files are generated: custom.world and controller.launch. The custom.world file has all the necessary specification for the scenario to be run on the Stage, for example:

include "/home/vivian/catkin_ws/src/swarm_stage_ros/launch/include/map.inc"
include "/home/vivian/catkin_ws/src/swarm_stage_ros/launch/include/robots.inc"
include "/home/vivian/catkin_ws/src/swarm_stage_ros/launch/include/sensors.inc"
floorplan (name "cave" size [16.000 16.000 0.800] pose [0 0 0 0] bitmap "/home/vivian/catkin_ws/src/swarm_stage_ros/launch/map/image.png")
turtlebot (name "r0" pose [0.00 0.00 0 0 ] color "red")
roomba (name "r1" pose [-0.30 0.30 0 0 ] color "blue")
roomba (name "r2" pose [-0.30 -0.30 0 0 ] color "blue")
roomba (name "r3" pose [-0.60 0.60 0 0 ] color "blue")
roomba (name "r4" pose [-0.60 -0.60 0 0 ] color "blue")
roomba (name "r5" pose [-0.90 0.90 0 0 ] color "blue")
roomba (name "r6" pose [-0.90 -0.90 0 0 ] color "blue")
roomba (name "r7" pose [-1.20 1.20 0 0 ] color "blue")
roomba (name "r8" pose [-1.20 -1.20 0 0 ] color "blue")
roomba (name "r9" pose [-1.50 1.50 0 0 ] color "blue")
roomba (name "r10" pose [-1.50 -1.50 0 0 ] color "blue")

The controller.launch file is generated in order to run the environment that has just been created:

<?xml version="1.0"?> <launch>

- <master auto="start"/>

- <node pkg="stage_ros" type="stageros" name="stageros" args="$(find swarm_stage_ros)/launch/custom.world" respawn="true" output="log"/>

</launch>

The swarm_stage.launch requires as a parameter the arguments passed by the swarm.yaml file:

swarm:

formation: 'wedge' #no, wedge, square or diamond
robots: 10 #used to "no" formation
random_colors: 'yes' #yes or no
side: 2 #number of robots per side
completed: 'no' #when used formation
leader: 'no' #yes or no
leader_sonar_sensor: 0 #0, 1 or 3
leader_laser_sensor: 'no' #yes or no
other_robots_sonar_sensor: 0 #0, 1 or 3, use this field for formation = 'no'
other_robots_laser_sensor: 'no' #yes or no
scenario: 'forest' #stadium, forest or hospital
position_controller: 'yes' #yes or no
reference: 'global' #relative(odom) or global
publish_tf: 'no' #yes or no, use this field when reference = "relative"

run: 'yes'

To simplify the understanding of each parameter required to the swarm.yaml file, the following table presents a summary, which contains the values allowed by parameter and a brief description.

Parameters of the file swarm.yaml
Parameter	Possible Values	Description
formation	no, wedge, square or diamond	Is the type of formation to be used by the swarm of robots.
robots	>0	Number of robots to be used when the type of formation chosen is "no". For other types of formation this parameter is ignored.
random_colors	yes or no	If "yes" is chosen, the colors of the robots will be random.
side	>0	Number of robots for each side of the chosen formation. If no formation was chosen, this field is ignored.
completed	yes or no	Used when some type of formation is chosen. When opted for "yes", the formation is filled with robots.
leader	yes or no	If a formation is chosen, an additional robot can be added as the leader.
leader_sonar_sensor	0,1 or 3	Leader may have 0, 1 or 3 sonars.
leader_laser_sensor	yes or no	A laser sensor can be added to the leader. Only one type of sensor is allowed to the leader.
other_robots_sonar_sensor	0,1 or 3	Robots can have 0, 1 or 3 sonars.
other_robots_laser_sensor	yes or no	A laser sensor can be added to the robots. Only one type of sensor is allowed to the robots.
scenario	stadium, forest or hospital	The scenario for the simulation can be chosen. In the case of the forest scenario, trees are introduced as obstacles at random. In the case of the hospital, rooms are introduced.
position_controller	yes or no	If the value of the position controller parameter is yes, a node is created for each robot of the formation, to call the program posctrl that will receive as an argument the name of the robot. This program should control the \\ position of each robot.
reference	relative or global	Allows to choose whether the position of the robot will be relative, that is, based on the odometry or global position of the robot relative to the point of origin of the map.
publish_tf	yes or no	If the reference parameter is relative, it is possible to choose between the yes and no values for the publish tf parameter. If yes, the tf.launch file is created and for each robot a transformation is made between its relative position to its overall position on the map.

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