Wheeled Locomotor Component

Author:

Christian Neukom

Date:

1/24/2005

Overview

The WheeledLocomotorComponent models the activity of the individual steer and wheel motors of a wheeled robot. The model implements the methods of the Locomotor class. The wheel and motor definitions are read from a user specified XML robot description file.

Model Description

The WheeledLocomotorComponent sbscribes to all Locomotor interactions. High-level commands such as "rotate" are decomposed into steer and wheel motor activities which result in commands to individual control motors. Individual motor activities are computed according to a general algorithm that considers wheel and motor parameters as well as parameters specified in the command. The moveBaseTo command is composed into point turns and straight line drives. MoveBaseTo commands can only be executed by vehicles that that have the capability to perform a point turns.

Usage

WheeledLocomotorComponent RobotDescriptionFile RobotName

RobotDescriptionFile: The XML description file of the robot that contains the wheel and motor information.

RobotName: The robot's ID.

GUI

This component does not have a GUI.

Test Program

The WheeledLocomotorComponent can be tested using HLAB.

To run a test, start the RTI and the following components:

~MSF/components/MSDE/*Platform*/test_WheeldeLocomotorComponent
~MSF/components/manager/*Platform*/SimManager  4
~MSF/components/locomotor/*Platform*/WheeledLocomotorComponent atrvSteered.xml ATRV
~MSF/components/HLAB/COMv2-HLAB/*Platform*/H-Lab_COMv2

Select WheelLocomotor in the HLAB display and then commands form 
the new pop-up display. Enter values as shown in the image below.

HLAB GUI panel

Files

Code and data of the WheeledLocomotorComponent model reside in the MSF/component/locomotor directory and include the following files:

WheeledLocomotorComponent.dox		//  this document
WheeledLocomotorComponent.cpp		//  main program
WheeledLocomotorImpl.[h, cpp]		//  implementation of WheelLocomotorInstance class
WheelParser.h				//  utility to parse wheel and motor info from the robot descrition file
LocomotorActivity.h			//  base class of all locomotor activities
TranslateActivity.h			//  activity class for locomotion
RotateActivity.h			//  activity class for rotation
SteerMotorActivity.h			//  activity class for steering wheels
WheelMotorActivity.h			//  activity class for locomotion
MoveBaseToActivity.h			//  activity class for moveBaseTo command
makefile				//  make file for building program

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