NightOwl: Robotic Platform for Wheeled Service Robot
This is an incremental development for service robotics, focusing on modular design and simulation tools.
The paper presents NightOwl, a robotic platform for a wheeled service robot that navigates autonomously using LIDAR and modular programs in ROS, with simulation in Gazebo and RViz.
NightOwl is a robotic platform designed exclusively for a wheeled service robot. The robot navigates autonomously in omnidirectional fashion movement and equipped with LIDAR to sense the surrounding area. The platform itself was built using the Robot Operating System (ROS) and written in two different programming languages (C++ and Python). NightOwl is composed of several modular programs, namely hardware controller, light detection and ranging (LIDAR), simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), world model, path planning, robot control, communication, and behaviour. The programs run in parallel and communicate reciprocally to share various information. This paper explains the role of modular programs in the term of input, process, and output. In addition, NightOwl provides simulation visualized in both Gazebo and RViz. The robot in its environment is visualized by Gazebo. Sensor data from LIDAR and results from SLAM will be visualized by RViz.