BWI Virtour

Virtour is a public facing system for teleoperated building tours.

• Web address: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~larg/bwi_virtour/
• On the robot: uses ROS to manage tour, stream video, and take commands.
• On the website: uses rosjs to pipe commands to the robot

Features

• Adaptive Video streaming
• Teleoperated servo control
• Goal based logical navigation
• In-place robot rotation
• Robot position marker
• Tour leader management

Instructions

On robot:

1. Set up smallDNS

2. Change broadcastTour.sh to email correct people and with correct url

3. Bring up robot (eg: roslaunch bwi_launch segbot_v2.launch)

4. Launch roslaunch bwi_virtour virtour_passive.launch

5. Launch roslaunch bwi_virtour virtour_active-[cameratype].launch

On server:

1. Link or copy the web folder to /var/www

2. Modify index.html to add robot

Launch Files

There are two types of launch files, passive and full.

Before executing the virtour launch files make sure that the segbot launch files were executed (either segbot_v1.launch or segbot_v2.launch).

The passive launch files brings up the tour manager, rosbridge and mjpeg servers. Allows people to view the robot’s position, camera feed, and scavenger hunt status.

The full (active) launch files (no longer requires the passive one to be running), allows people to become tour leaders, control rotation, request navigation, as well all the features of passive.

Note that at the launch files assume you are running on a kinect powered robot. Comments in the launch file will provide a working launch file if servo or point-grey camera support is needed.

ROS Nodes

Tour Manager

Handles by tour_manager. Manages the tour state machine. Handles tour leaders, when tours are allowed, and authentication.

Exposed Services

• /tour_manager/authenticate - used to authenticate users and check if they are leader
• /tour_manager/get_tour_state - get the state of the current tour (excluding leader hash)
• /tour_manager/leave_tour - used to demote leaders
• /tour_manager/ping_tour - used to keep the tour leader alive
• /tour_manager/request_tour - used to request tours

Logical Navigation

Handled by the go_to_location_service_node. To add new goals, edit js/virtour.js

Exposed Services

• /go_to_location - used to navigate to semantic locations

Rotation

Handled by rotation_service_node. Takes in a float for the rotation delta

Exposed Services

• /rotate - used to perform on-the-spot rotations

Project structure

• /web contains all files necessary for hosting the website
• /src contains the c++ source for the ROS nodes
• /srv contains the service definitions

Resources

Old Talk

Small DNS

Changelog for package bwi_virtour

0.3.12 (2016-09-14)

• set execute permissions when installing scripts (utexas-bwi/bwi#46)
• document link to web page (#78)
• add roslaunch check (#73)
• Contributors: Jack O'Quin

0.3.11 (2016-08-27)

0.3.10 (2016-08-15)

• bwi_virtour: install scripts in catkin bin destination (#70) collect scripts in sub-folder do not install web folder
• bwi_virtour: fix catkin_lint errors, missing installs (#70)
• changed the way robots are detected
• added notice if no robots available
• removed serve certificate from enable and added deliver_message
• cleaned up result handling
• Contributors: Jack O'Quin, Pato

0.3.9 (2016-08-05)

• New bwi_common package, reconcile version number (#67)
• added starting kr execution and other service providers
• added launch files to enable and disable tours
• added UI for message delivery system
• added local debug version
• Contributors: Jack O'Quin, Pato