Welcome to the comprehensive guide on integrating the AGILEX TRACER MINI mobile robot chassis with the Robot Operating System (ROS). This section focuses on the ROS framework, which provides essential operating system services, hardware abstraction, low-level device control, and facilitates inter-process messaging for seamless communication between different nodes. ROS operates on a graphical architecture, allowing nodes to exchange information effectively, covering various domains such as sensing, control, state, and planning.

ROS provides some standard operating system services, such as hardware abstraction, low-level device control, implementation of common functions, inter-process messaging, and data packet management. ROS is based on a graphical architecture, so that processes of different nodes can receive, publish, and aggregate various information (such as sensing, control, state, planning, etc.).

Table of Contents

Currently ROS mainly supports UBUNTU.

Development preparation

1. Hardware preparation

• CANlight can communication module X1
• ThinkPad E470 Laptop X1
• AGILEX TRACER MINI mobile robot chassis X1
• AGILEX TRACER MINI supporting remote-control FS-i6s X1
• AGILEXTRACER MINI top aviation receptacle X1

2. Environment description of usage example

• Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
• ROS Kinetic
• Git

Hardware connection and preparation

• Pull out the CAN line of the TRACER MINI rear aviation plug, and connect the CAN_H and CAN_L in the CAN line to the CAN_TO_USB adapter respectively.
• Turn on the chassis knob switch of the TRACER MINI mobile robot.
• Connect CAN_TO_USB to the USB port of the laptop. The connection diagram is shown in Figure 3.4.

Figure 3.4 CAN line connection diagram

ROS Installation and Environment Setup