WEBOTS CONNECTOR NODE DRIVER
WEBOTS CONNECTOR NODE SIMULATOR

Anyway, I won’t go into to the simulator too much and save that for another blogpost! Simple Mapping

WEBOTS CONNECTOR NODE DRIVER

So I used the webots driver node to write a simulated Crazyflie that should output the same information as the real Crazyflie node, so that I can easily hack around and try out different things without constantly disturbing my cats from their slumber :). As luck has it, Webots also has good ROS2 integration as well, and even won the ‘Best ROS Software’ award by The Construct’s ROS awards! Another reason is that I wanted to try out a different simulator for ROS2 this time to complement what I’ve learned in the ROS2 course I mentioned earlier. Actually… Webots’ next release (2022b) will contain a Crazyflie as standard! Once it is out, I’ll write a blogpost about that separately :). Luckily, I’ve already started to look at simulators, and was quite far in the Webots integration of the Crazyflie. Then I decided to take one or two steps back, and first connect a simulator to make tuning a bit easier.

Of course the SLAM toolbox is meant for lidars and not something that provided sparse range distances like the Multiranger. However, tuning this was of course more work than I thought, as the map that I got out of it first was mostly a sparse collection of dots. I have worked with ROS1 in the past, but I had my first experience working with that package in the course: Build Mobile Robots with ROS2 (by Weekly Robotic Newsletter’s Mat Sadowski), so I couldn’t wait to try it on a real platform like the Crazyflie. Development with a SimulatorĪnd of course… I went in head first and connected it directly with the SLAM toolbox. Moreover, it also outputs several tf2 transforms that makes it possible to either visualize it in RVIZ and/or connect it to any other packages and it should react to incoming twist messages as well. I am focusing on the scenario with the STEM ranging bundle, aka the Crazyflie + Flowdeck (optical flow + distance sensor) + Multi-ranger (5 x distance sensors) combo, where the node logs the multi-ranger data and the odometry from the Flowdeck with the Crazyradio and outputs that into necessary /scan and /odom topics. The CrazySwam2 is currently under more development by the IMRClab of TU Berlin, but please take a look if you want to give it a go!įor now while Crazyswarm2 is still under development, I used the Bitcraze Crazyflie python library to make a more hackish node that just publishes exactly the information I want. Even though the name says Crazy Swarm, this can be very easily used for only one Crazyflie too. I think many of you are familiar with the USC’s CrazySwarm project, of which the ROS2 variant, CrazySwarm2, is already available for most functionalities. So first I worked on the ROS2 node that actually communicates with the Crazyflie directly. The summer fun project that I’ve been now working on is to integrate the Crazyflie with ROS2 to integrate standard navigational packages, which will be the topic of this blogpost! ROS2 Crazyflie Node It also initiated my work with simulators which I think would be very useful for the community too.

This means that I’ll be dwelling more often in the space between Bitcraze and the community, which is something that I do really enjoy I noticed during the Grand Tour. In the first years that I started at Bitcraze I’ve been focused mostly on embedded development and algorithmic design like the app layer, controllers and estimators and such, however recently I started to be quite interested in the robotic integration between the Crazyflie and other (open-source) projects and users.

Webots connector node