Hi all,
I have a robotic research platform with caster wheels on the front and drive wheels at the back. At the moment it's driving with caster wheels at the front but I feel the dynamics could be improved by driving with the caster wheels at the back.
http://imgur.com/a/885oe
I have been thinking of different ways to accomplish this:
1. **Put a negative infront of motor control commands.** This approach is on the lowest level. I am controlling the motors via an Arduino and putting a negative infront of motor control signals could accomplish the behaviour I desire. However the problem is that the frames such as base_link won't know the robot is moving in the other direction so control commands will all be reversed. Thus navigation will stop working.
2. **Change orientation of base_link frame.** I tried doing this already but it didn't work, the robot simply drove in the casters-forward direction. My thought was that by changing the direction of base_link all commands would 'trickle down'. So the robot would take forwards at the casters-back direction and the footprint and move_base functionality should remain.
As I mentioned, I haven't has success in these approaches so would love to hear if anyone has ideas on how to make the robot consider the typically 'backwards' direction as forwards.
Thanks!
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