February 2016 Archives

From osrfoundation.org

PX4 is a flight control software stack for autonomous aerial robots that describes itself as "rocket science straight from the best labs, powering anything from racing to cargo drones." One of these labs is at ETH Zurich, where Roman Bapst serves on the faculty. Bapst works on computer vision and actively contributes to the PX4 autopilot platform.

Bapst starts out by describing some of the great things about the PX4 autopilot: it's open source, open hardware, and supported by the Linux Foundation's Dronecode Project, which provides a framework under which developers can contribute to an open source standard platform for drones. PX4 runs on 3DRobotics' Pixhawk hardware, and once you hook up some sensors and servos, it will autonomously pilot nearly anything that flies - from conventional winged aircraft to multicopters to hybrids.

One of PX4's unique features is its modularity, which is fundamentally very similar in structure to ROS. This means that you can run PX4 modules as ROS nodes, while taking advantage of other ROS packages under PX4 to do things like vision based navigation and control. Additionally, it lets you easily simulate PX4-based drones within Gazebo, which, unlike real life, has a free reset button that you can push after a crash.

The PX4 team is currently getting their software modules running as ROS nodes on Qualcomm's Snapdragon Flight drone development platform, which would be a very capable and (affordable) way of getting started with a custom autonomous drone.

ROSCon 2015 Hamburg: Day 1 - Roman Bapst: ROS on DroneCode Systems from OSRF on Vimeo.

Amy Robotics is an innovative company focused on service robots that enhances quality of life through robotic technologies, products and services. 

Our team is based in Hangzhou, China. We are developing autonomous service robots for that assistant people in everyday living and work. We need some help to improve our development process and get our robot shipped soon. We are looking for multiple experienced roboticists to work on mobile robot navigation and computer vision for our service robots. 
  
Position 1: 
As a robotics engineer, you will be involved in designing, implementing and testing systems for mapping, planning and localisation, context awareness. Excellent candidate will lead the research and development of our robot navigation in its environments. We have many challenging problems and will give you independence and flexibility to address them to create a complete product experience. 
From Ricky Li via ros-users@

Qualifications: 

- Solid knowledge of mobile robot navigation theory. 
- Proficiency with C++, Python, and Linux 
- Hands on experience in ROS development in a Linux environment 
- Experience with robots and sensor systems in the real world 
- Experience in Android development is a big plus.   
- Ph.D. or MSc (with 3 year experience ), BSc (with 5 years experience) in robotics or related field 

Position 2: 

As a Machine Vision Scientist you will lead the research and development of our robot's image-based understanding of its environment. Specifically you will be responsible for developing and testing tools and algorithms in areas such as: 

Detection and recognition of people and object 
Place recognition 
Motion detection (of things in the environment) while stationary and while driving 
Feature tracking 
Image stabilization 
Object detection and tracking 
Visual odometry etc. 

Qualifications: 
-Expert knowledge in C++ 
-Experience working with OpenCV 
-Experience applying machine learning to real-world vision problems 
-At least 3 years of experience designing, implementing, and tuning computer vision algorithms 
-M.S./Ph.D. or B.S. and 5 years experience in computer science or related fields 

Desirable skills: 
-Experience with deep learning algorithms or toolkits 
-Experience with sensor fusion or multimodal perception 
-Experience with embedded hardware development 
-Experience with Python 
-Experience with GPU computing. 
-Experience in Android development is a big plus.   

If you are interested in creating sophisticated robot, or building a company and have a strong desire to make difference in robot revolution, we would like to hear from you. 
Please submit resume, letter of motivation, and (a link to) any supporting materials (personal profile, open source contribution, project etc.) by email to Ricky Li : lirj?at?amyrobot.cn 

What's ROS android_ndk? Why should you care? How does it work? Gary Servín is with Ekumen, an engineering and software consulting company based in Buenos Aires, Argentina that specializes in ROS, web and Android development. With the backing of Qualcomm and OSRF, Ekumen has been trying to make it both possible and easy to run ROS applications on small Android devices like tablets and cellphones using Android's native language development kit.

As Gary explains, the increasing performance, decreasing cost, and overall ubiquity of Android devices make them ideal brains for robots. The tricky part is getting ROS packages to play nice with Android, which is where ROS android_ndk comes in: it's a set of scripts that Ekumen is working on to make the process much easier. Unlike rosjava, ROS android_ndk gives you access to 181 packages from the desktop variant of ROS, with the ability to run native ROS nodes directly.

Ekumen is actively working on this project, with plans to incorporate wrappers for rosjava, actionlib implementation, and support for ROS 2. In the meantime, there's already a set of tutorials on ROS.org that should help you get started.

ROSCon 2015 Hamburg: Day 1 - Gary Servin: ROS android_ndk: What? Why? How? from OSRF on Vimeo.

From Patrick Wiesen

After four ROS Summer Schools in Aachen, we are happy to announce now our first export ROS Summer School at the Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria.

It will be a one week event from 07th March 2016 to 12th March 2016 ending up in a competition using the mobile robots developed at FH Aachen. The common mobile robotic topics using ROS will be covered: ROS Basics, Communication, Transforms, Hardware Interfacing, Teleoperation, Landmark Detection, Localization, Mapping and a lot more. After theoretic lectures, we will continue with our hands-on hardware workshops using ROS on the robots as usual.

And because we never gonna stop, we are offering another ROS Summer School at our own university FH Aachen this year again. The event is planned from 15th August till 26th August 2016. Students in the field of Robotics, Mechatronics, Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering or everyone else interested in learning the basic skills of ROS is invited to register now! In this two weeks we are handling the following topics of mobile robotics more in detail:

ROS Basics, Communication, Hardware Interfacing, Teleoperation, Transforms, Gazebo Simulation, Landmark Detection, Localization, Mapping, Navigation, Control, some Industrial exhibition and so on and so on. . . Of course all this topics can be experienced on real hardware using our mobile robots after learning the theory.

And if this is still not enough for you, we offer an additional ROS UAV weekend afterwards from 27th to 28th of August. This will include assembling UAVs, first flight setup, flight modes, ROS interfacing, Landmark Detection and getting in touch with autonomous flying. Feel free to choose this option in our application form. Application form, more information, photos and videos can be found on our homepage:

https://www.fh-aachen.de/en/faculties/mechanical-engineering-and-mechatronics/international-topics/ros/

All is organized by MASCOR.  The ROS Summer School is designed to teach participants about how to get started with ROS; it is created for those who have had an interest in autonomous systems, but didn't quite know how to get started. With that, organizers recommend students have a basic knowledge of Linux (Ubuntu) and one programming language such as Python or C++. The two-week program is made possible through Mobile Autonomous Systems and Cognitive Robotics (MASCOR), and key players including Prof. Walter Reichert, Prof. Stephan Kallweit, Prof. Alexander Ferrein, and Prof. Ingrid Scholl.

Stefan's early research using tiny soccer-playing humanoid robots at Technische Universität Darmstadt in Germany prepared him well for software development on much larger humanoid robots that don't play soccer at all. From the Darmstadt Dribblers RoboCup team to the DARPA Robotics Challenge Team ViGIR, Stefan has years of experience with robots that need to walk on two legs and do things while not falling over (much).

Almost all of the software that Team ViGIR used to control its ATLAS robot (named Florian) was ROS based. Stefan credits both the team's prior experience with ROS, ROS's existing software base, and its vibrant community for why Team ViGIR made the choice to go with ROS from the very beginning. Controlling the ATLAS robot is exceedingly complex, and Stefan takes us through the software infrastructure that Team ViGIR used during the DRC; from basic perception to motion planning to manipulation and user interfaces.

With lots of pictures and behind-the-scenes videos, Stefan describes how Team ViGIR planned to tackle the challenging DRC Finals course. The team used both high-level autonomy and low-level control, with an emphasis on dynamic, flexible collaboration between robot and operator. Stefan narrates footage of both of Florian's runs at the DRC Finals; each was eventful, but we won't spoil it for you.

To wrap up his talk, Stephan describes some of the lessons that Team ViGIR learned through their DRC experience: about ROS, about ridiculously complex humanoid robots, and about participating in a global robotics competition.

ROSCon 2015 Hamburg: Day 1 - Stefan Kohlbrecher: An Introduction to Team ViGIR's Open Source Software and DRC Post Mortem from OSRF on Vimeo.

• throttle
• brakes
• steering
• shifting
• turn signals

• gyros
• accelerometers
• gps
• wheel speeds
• tire pressures

In 2004, Canonical released the first version of Ubuntu, a Debian-based open source Linux OS that provides one of the main operational foundations of ROS. Canonical's founder, Mark Shuttleworth, was CEO of the company until 2009, when he transitioned to a leadership role that lets him focus more on product design and partnerships. In 2002, Mark spent eight days aboard the International Space Station, but that was before the ISS was home to a ROS-powered robot. He currently lives on the Isle of Man with 18 ducks and an occasional sheep. Ubuntu was a platinum co-sponsor of ROSCon 2015, and Mark gave the opening keynote on developing a business in the robot age.

Changes in society and business are both driven by changes in technology, Mark says, encouraging those developing technologies to consider the larger consequences that their work will have, and how those consequences will result in more opportunities. Shuttleworth suggests that robotics developers really need two things at this point: a robust Internet of Things infrastructure, followed by the addition of dynamic mobility that robots represent. However, software is a much more realistic business proposition for a robotics startup, especially if you leverage open source to create a developer community around your product and let others innovate through what you've built.

To illustrate this principle, Mark shows a live demo of a hexapod called Erle-Spider, along with a robust, high-level 'meta' build and packaging tool called Snapcraft. Snapcraft makes it easy for users to install software and for developers to structure and distribute it without having to worry about conflicts or inter-app security. The immediate future promises opportunities for robotics in entertainment and education, Mark says, especially if hardware, ROS, and an app-like economy can come together to give developers easy, reliable ways to bring their creations to market.

ROSCon 2015 Hamburg: Day 1 - Mark Shuttleworth: Commercial models for the robot generation from OSRF on Vimeo.