[Playerstage-developers] Extension Player-Stage driver for Roomba

[Federico S. <fed...@gm...>]

Hello,
I'm Federico Sassi a student of the Robotics Lab (
http://rimlab.ce.unipr.it/ ) at University of Parma (Italy) and I
extended Player-Stage driver for Roomba.

I read a precedent discussion around August 25th, where Chad Jenkins
introduced an IRProxy implementing wall, cliff, virtual wall detection
sensors.
So I've implemented his ideas but we needed access to other sensors; in
particular we needed to
read button and remote input status
set led over Roomba
read wheeldrops status
activate vacuuming motors

I couldn't find any appropriate proxy already inside PlayerStage that
would allow me to access these sensors in an easy way (with operator[]
in an array-like way as with an IrProxy). I've tried to map buttons
status in a DioProxy even if I couldn't get it to work. Moreover I've
understood that it can send just one byte so I would have had to
implement two DioProxy, one for buttons and one for remote because the
remote itself sends one byte.
So I've decided to use two OpaqueProxy:
OpaqueProxy:::”control” to read button and remote status and to set leds.
OpaqueProxy:::”motor” to read wheeldrops and to activate vacuum.

I know that this isn't straightforward but I couldn't figure out another
way (better ideas are appreciated).

So I extended Gerkey's lower level driver (roomba_comms.c) inside
PlayerStage 2.0.2 implementing two easy function to set leds and motors;
and I extended the abstract driver with the three new Proxy.
Everything seems to work.

In attachments you can find
- modified versions of the drivers (roomba_comm.h roomba_comm.c
roomba_driver.cc)
- diffs file from PlayerStage source 2.0.2 (diff_roomba_comm.h
diff_roomba_comm.c diff_roomba_driver.cc)
- a simple C++ program that explain the usage of the new proxies
(roombamove.cc roombamove.h Makefile)
- configuration file for Player-Stage

I hope this work could be useful to someone else.

Thanks very much to having read this far!

Federico Sassi