The repository for the Sigyn robot.

Motivation

Worldwide, the number of elderly people (65 years and older) surpassed the number of children under 5 years of age in 2019. It is likely, in my lifetime, that there will be more people needing assistance in their lives than there will people who can provide it. I don’t expect to be able to afford especially extraordinary care, nor do I expect not to need it as I age. My alternative is to create the needed technology so it will be there when I need it.

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/population-aged-65-outnumber-children

Wimble Robotics is a one-person effort to create an assistive robot for my personal use.

Organization

The various directories contain:

• Designs
  Holds various design documents. E.g. Fusion 360, LightBurn.
• Docker
  For creating docker images to run the code.
• Documentation
  Documentation artifacts, such as notes, wireviz documentation.
• Media
  Interesting pictures, movies.
• base
  ROS 2 package containing the main lunch files, configuration, maps and such.
• description
  ROS 2 package containing the URDF and Gazebo worlds.
• experiments
  Ongoing, vague experiements. Just a repository for trying out things that might become real code eventually, or gather data to guide development.
• gripper
  Teensy 4.1 code that manages the gripper elevator and extender.
• lidar
  Forked from elsewhere, contains fixes and customizations.
• msgs
  Contains messages for internal usage, not external API.
• micro_ros
  For creating a custom micro_ros with bigger message sizes and more of each resource kind.
• rviz
  rviz2 configuration files.
• scripts
  Utility scripts.
• sigyn_interfaces.
  Contains message, action and service definitions for ROS 2.
• twist_multiplexer
  Forked from elsewhere, contains fixes and customizations.
• udev
  Various rules to be placed in /etc/udev/rules to deal with the hardware. Mostly creates symbolic links to various devices, such as the teensy 4.1 and LIDAR devices.

Running the Robot

This is a standard ROS 2 package. Build it with colcon and source install/setup.bash

In one window, you need to run the MicroRos agent via

ros2 run micro_ros_agent micro_ros_agent serial --dev /dev/teensy_sensor

Note that this relies on udev rules to create a symbolic link to the teensy 4.1 device in the /dev directory (see 00-teensy.rules).

In another window, run the nav2 stack, which also launches the other needed components.

ros2 launch base sigyn.launch.py use_sim_time:=false do_rviz:=true

To visualize the system, run rviz2. There is a configuration file which shows things the way I like.

rviz2 -d ~/sigyn_ws/src/Sigyn/rviz/config/config.rviz

I usually begin by using the rviz2 interface to set the 2D Pose Estimate, then I use the teleop module to move the robot around a bit to make sure that localization is working. Then I set a goal and watch it work.

If you don't have your own way of running teleoperation, here's what I use:

ros2 run teleop_twist_keyboard teleop_twist_keyboard

Running the Robot in Simulation

The robot can be run in simulation by running the following command:

ros2 launch base sigyn.launch.py use_sim_time:=true