Navigator Bot

This repository contains the code for a robot that continuously navigates its environment to explore new areas.

RViz	Gazebo

In the above images you are able to see the robot navigate the environment using an occupancy map created from lidar scans. Frontiers are detected in the occupancy map and clustered, each cluster displayed as a different colour. Lastly, the green path is displayed in front of the robot which it follows.

Getting started

This repository has been tested with ROS 2 Jazzy and Gazebo Harmonic. You can use this ros_docker repository for a simple docker container with those installed.

With this repository in your ROS 2 workspace, run these commands:

colcon build
ros2 launch navigator_bot_bringup diff_drive.launch.py

Architecture diagram

Included packages

Autonomy

• occupancy_grid_mapper: Creates the 2D occupancy map of the robot's environment

Gazebo

The navigator_bot_bringup, navigator_bot_description and navigator_bot_gazebo packages are modified from the ros_gz_project_template repository. Currently, the only changes were inside the navigator_bot_gazebo package to create the walls and blocks for the map.

• navigator_bot_bringup: Contains the launch file that will start up Gazebo, RViz, and all ROS nodes
• navigator_bot_description: Contains the .sdf file for the robot
• navigator_bot_gazebo: Contains the .sdf file with the world, plugins and links to the robot .sdf file to be loaded into gazebo