Go Chase It!

Robotics Software Engineer Nanodegree @Udacity

A differential drive mobile robot that chases a white ball using image processing. To interact with the scene just move the ball around in Gazebo. As long as it's in the camera FOV, the robot drives towards it.

The Gazebo world design intends to replicate the WorldSkills Mobile Robotics next challange in a simplified version. For more information please take a look on a brief competition overview at the end.

How to Launch the simulation?

Create a catkin_ws, feel free to skip if you already have one!

$ cd /home/workspace/
$ mkdir -p /home/workspace/catkin_ws/src/
$ cd catkin_ws/src/
$ catkin_init_workspace
$ cd ..

Clone the package in catkin_ws/src/

$ cd /home/workspace/catkin_ws/src/
$ git clone https://github.com/TheodoroCardoso/go-chase-it.git

Build the packages

$ cd /home/workspace/catkin_ws/ 
$ catkin_make

After building the packages, source your environment

$ cd /home/workspace/catkin_ws/
$ source devel/setup.bash

Once my_robot and ball_chaser packages have been built, you can launch the simulation environment using

$ roslaunch my_robot world.launch

Make the robot chase te ball

Open a new terminal and type the following:

$ cd /home/workspace/catkin_ws/
$ source devel/setup.bash
$ roslaunch ball_chaser ball_chaser.launch

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Learn more about WorldSkills

WorldSkills Is the world's largest TVET competition that happens every 2 years in a different country.

Last event was in Kazan, Russia and had over 60 different skills from bakery to hairdressing to mobile robotics.

The next edition which will take place in Shanghai, China 2022.

Mobile Robotics

The competition is based on a robotics kit to level the playing field between different countries.

In previous years LabVIEW was the mandatory programming language, but for the next edition the hardware has changed and more options like ROS are available.

The Robot's Task

The WS Shanghai 2022 challange simulates a hospital.

In the actual competition teams will develop mobile robots that have to carry medicines and hazardous materials represented by colored cubes and gurneys represented by a four wheeled chassis.