Design and Implementation of Platform of
Educational Mobile Robots Based on ROS
Xinguo Yu, Lvzhou Gao, Bin He, Xiaowei Shao
May 20, 2017
National Engineering Research Center for E-Learning
Central China Normal University
Outline
• Research subject
• Problem
• Related works
• Experiments and evaluation
• Conclusions
Research subject
• Now we have a research subject to build a education robot who can
provide services for teaching activities in classroom, and the major
functions of robot include four parts:
1,Speeking.The robot could talk with students through voice.
2, Autonomous Movement. It can go anywhere in classroom without
help from human.
3, Object following. Using computer vision recognition one’s body, robot
follows him/her at a certain distance.
4,Indoor localization. Project Multimedia sources on the wall accurately
based on the accurate localization.
Problem
We need a robot to test our algorithm and to adapt to our
classroom.
• In recent years, several mobile robotic platforms have emerged, for instance
NAO, Turtlebot. However, there are still problems, such as high price, weak
capability of redevelopment, and poor extensibility, which have seriously
hindered the application and promotion of educational robot.
• Lower price is a significant factor for wildly accepting by school and students.
At present, robot platform is expensive generally, in addition,this platform
can’t meet many special need of education.
• We want to have our own robot system including hardware and software,
which contribute the formation and promotion of education robot.
Related works
• Selecting robot operating system
Projects
Windows
Android
Ubuntu
ROS
Openness
No open source
Open source
Open source
Open source
Software independence
Poor
Common
Common
High
Difficulty of development
Common
Low
High
Low
Real-time
Fast
Common
Slow
Fast(ROS2.0)
Stability
High
Common
Common
Common
Application areas
Medical field
commerce
research,
education
research, education, commerce
Related works
• Hardware Framework Design of Educational Robot
Server
layer
ROS
Wifi
Kinect1.0
Sonar
Power Supply
Touch
screen
Encorder
RFID
Upper
computer
layer
Sound
card
Kinect 1.0
Raspberry
Pi
2B
Network
card
Touch
screen
Projector
RFID
Motor
Bluetooth
L298P
Arduino
Driver board
mega2560
Car body
Serial communication
Arduino
development board
Lower
DC motor
computer
layer
Photoelectric
Projector
RPi 2B
Network card
Wifi
Ultrasonic
radar
L298P driver
board
encoder
Car chassis
Bluetooth
Prototype
Prototype
Sound
card
Related works
• Design of Robot Software Framework
RGBD data
Opinni
User
interface
coordinate
transformation
Rviz
Sensor coordinate
Obstacle avoidance
algorithm
Odometer
calculation
Pin mode setting
service
Bottom control
node
Sensor data
Multimedia
device driver
Keyboard control
cmd_vel
Lower
computer
Experimental results
 Control of Motion error
Error statistics of linear velocity of robot 0.3m/s
Displacement/
cm
Measurement
times
Average speed/
(m/s)
Feedback speed/
(m/s)
Error/
(m/s)
100
300
500
700
900
20
20
20
20
20
0.301
0.301
0.300
0.300
0.301
0.302
0.303
0.303
0.302
0.303
0.001
0.002
0.003
0.002
0.002
Error statistics of robot 6 rad/s angle
Sequence
Target rotation angle
/(°)
Actual rotation angle
/(°)
Feedback angle
/(°)
Error/
(°)
1
90
90.8
90.2
0.6
2
180
180.7
180
0.7
3
270
270.9
270.2
0.7
4
360
361.3
360.4
0.9
Experimental results
 SlAM and Navigation
Autonomous navigation of robots based on map is an important solution for robot
to move autonomously in teaching scene. The prototype machine integrated three
commonly used function packages for robotic autonomous navigation: move_base,
gmapping, amcl,which are provided by ROS.
Conclusions and future work
• Taking the application of robots in education and the needs of
educational robot research into consideration, we designed a
three-layer architecture of educational robot, as well as a
hardware framework and a software framework. Then, we
implemented an embedded educational robot prototype by
transplanting ROS into a Raspberry Pi with good
performance and lower price. In the end, experiments of
motion control, speech and vision of robot were carried out
on the prototype.
• we will optimize the existing educational robot prototype. On
the other hand, we will focus on the development of the
subject-oriented robot solution, so that the robot will become
a mobile "teacher".
Talent recruitment
• Recruit talents in ICT to do RnT . High requirement and high
payment for Joint Institute btw CCNU & UOW.
• Maser, doctor, enginner, teacher who are skilled in communication,
mechanical automation, and robot system integration, etc.
• CCNU web:http://www.ccnu.edu.cn/
• NERCEL web:http://nercel.ccnu.edu.cn/
• Professor Yu——http://nercel.ccnu.edu.cn/info/1072/3066.htm
• Professor yu Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]