This repository will contain the ROS packages of the robotics research group at the School of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

History

The crosbot packages were originally part of the CASRobot software suite developed within the ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems (CAS) in the School of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) for research and teaching purposes.

Many of these components have now been ported to ROS and will continue to be maintained and developed as ROS packages. To date, the focus of the robotics team at CSE has been on Robocup Rescue related challenges and consequently the focus of these packages reflects these origins. In particular there are a number of packages for mapping and localisation, as well as interfaces for semi-autonomous robot control.

Available Software

Crosbot Base

This includes mobile base control and a packages that can be used as alternatives to the standard ROS 2D navigation stack.

SLAM

These SLAM modules can be used as a replacement for the standard gmapping packages. They offer further functionality such as embedding of landmarks and components in the map.

Odometry and Positioning

Wheel encoders and odometry cannot always be relied on, especially in a urban search and rescue type environment. These packages use iterative closest point (ICP) algorithms to provide accurate positioning.

Robot GUI

User interface and visualisation tools that can be used to provide semi-autonomous control of a robot.