This project aimed to study the open source ROS framework in order to perform a single-robot patrolling of a known map of piazza Bra in Verona, Italy. ROS (Robot Operating System) provides libraries and tools to help software developers create robot applications. It provides hardware abstraction, device drivers, libraries, visualizers, message-passing, package management and more [1].
Starting from the tools provided we describe a scenario in which a mobile robot is able to localize itself in a given map and navigate through it avoiding obstacles to reach a given goal position.
For visualization purposes we adopted the well known Stage 2D robot simulator which provides a virtual world populated by mobile robots and sensors, along with various objects for the robots to sense and manipulate. Stage is fairly simple to allow an easy set-up but at the same time it is intended to be just realistic enough to enable users to move controllers directly between Stage robots and real robots [2].
Our simulated environment interacts with the external world through a TCP interface which allows us to send getpose and gotopose commands to direct the robot in the map in an autonomous manner towards a goal location.