Roboclaw

Roboclaw is an extensible series of Roboclaw nodes for ROS

Features

• The base node "roboclaw_node" supports up to 8 Roboclaw controllers using packet serial mode
• Drive systems and odometry are decoupled from the base Roboclaw node
• A differential drive node is supported out of the box
• Written in roscpp for effecient memory usage and performance

Requirements

• ROS Kinetic/Lunar/Melodic

Nodes

roboclaw_node

Parameters

Param	Type	Description
serial_port	string	Path to the serial port to use
baudrate	int	Baudrate of the serial port
roboclaws	int	Number of Roboclaw controllers in packet serial mode

Topics

Action	Topic	Type
publish	motor_enc_steps	roboclaw/RoboclawEncoderSteps
subscribe	motor_cmd_vel	roboclaw/RoboclawMotorVelocity

Notes

• When using one Roboclaw controller, configure it in packet serial mode with address 0x80. This will be motor index 0 in RoboclawEncoderSteps and RoboclawMotorVelocity.
• When using more than one Roboclaw controller, configure them in packet serial mode with 0x80 being motor index 0, 0x81 being motor index 1, and so on.

diffdrive_node

Parameters

Param	Type	Description
steps_per_meter	string	Number of encoder steps per meter
base_width	int	Diameter of the robots base from the center of each wheel
swap_motors	bool	Swap motor1 with motor2
invert_motor_1	bool	Invert drive and odometry for motor1
invert_motor_2	bool	Invert drive and odometry for motor2

Topics

Action	Topic	Type
publish	odom	Odometry
subscribe	cmd_vel	Twist

Planned

• Support for the NASA JPL Open Source Rover's drive system
• Exposing more of the Roboclaw's functionality via messages / services