Omnidirectional Manipulator Robot using ROS2

Omnidirectional Manipulator Robot using ROS2 and MicroROS.

Table of Contents

• Omnidirectional Manipulator Robot using ROS2
  • Table of Contents
  • Current Simulation Results
  • Hardware Requirements
  • Software Requirements
  • Installation
  • Controller Setup
  • Project Setup

Current Simulation Results

Check the project on youtube

Hardware Requirements

• ESP32.
• JGB37-520 motors.
• H bridge L293D.
• Xbox controller.
• 18650 batteries.
• Raspberry Pi 5 (4gb RAM).
• Arduino Mega 2560.
• MG995 servomotors.
• Intel Realsense D415.
• Lidar Sensor LD19 (LDROBOT).

Software Requirements

In order for the project to work we need to have installed Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Noble Numbat alocated in a partition with a Windows dual boot or as the main Operating System of your machine.

You can try to virtualize it but in my experience, networking and driver problems arouse.

Installation

We need to install ROS Jazzy, you can follow the documentation on how to install it or you can follow and run these few commands inside Ubuntu's terminal:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install locales
sudo locale-gen en_US en_US.UTF-8
sudo update-locale LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository universe

sudo apt update && sudo apt install curl -y
sudo curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros/rosdistro/master/ros.key -o /usr/share/keyrings/ros-archive-keyring.gpg
echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/ros-archive-keyring.gpg] http://packages.ros.org/ros2/ubuntu $(. /etc/os-release && echo $UBUNTU_CODENAME) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros2.list > /dev/null

sudo apt update && sudo apt install ros-dev-tools
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install ros-jazzy-desktop

Controller Setup

You can use any controller listed in the documentation. I'm personally using an 8bitdo Ultimate C 2.4GHz. It is not a Xbox Controller per se but I managed to find some drivers to trick Linux into thinking it is a generic Xbox Controller (you can find the post here):

touch /etc/udev/rules.d/99-8bitdo-xinput.rules
sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/99-8bitdo-xinput.rules

Inside 99-8bitdo-xinput.rules you type the following and save:

ACTION=="add", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2dc8", ATTRS{idProduct}=="3106", RUN+="/sbin/modprobe xpad", RUN+="/bin/sh -c 'echo 2dc8 3106 > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/xpad/new_id'"

Reload udevadm service

sudo udevadm control --reload

You also need to make your joystick device accesible:

ls -l /dev/input/jsX

You will see something similar to:

crw-rw-XX- 1 root dialout 188, 0 2009-08-14 12:04 /dev/input/jsX

We need to change XX to rw:

sudo chmod a+rw /dev/input/jsX

Project Setup

Clone this repository:

git clone https://github.com/Xtalism/ROS2-Omni-Manipulator.git

We need to source, install dependencies and compile our workspace just as follows:

Sourcing ROS2:

source /opt/ros/${ROS_DISTRO}/setup.bash

Sourcing the project:

cd ros2_ws/
source install/setup.bash

Installing dependencies and compiling the project:

rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y
colcon build --symlink-install

To run any package or launch file"

ros2 run <package_name> <program_name>
ros2 launch <package_name> <launch_file>