Autonomous Exploration using Symbolic Motion Planner (SMP)

Autonomous_Exploration is framework for exploration planning and mapping. It is based on Symbolic controller based approach, to tackle navigation and exploration while providing safety guarantees. It can be used to perform Autonomous Navigation (SMP) or Exploration.

Table of Contents

Credits

• Video

Setup

• Installation
• Example

Video

For a short overview of the system check out our video on youtube.

Installation

Installation instructions for Linux.

Prerequisites

1. If not already done so, install ROS (Desktop-Full is recommended).

Installation

1. Move to your catkin workspace:

   cd ~/catkin_ws/src

2. Download repo using a SSH key or via HTTPS:

   git clone https://github.com/FocasLab/autonomous_exploration

3. Install system dependencies:

   sudo apt-get install python-wstool python-catkin-tools

4. Download and install turtlebot3 packages from

   https://emanual.robotis.com/docs/en/platform/turtlebot3/simulation/#gazebo-simulation
   

   or other Robot Simulation such as AgileX Limo, Clearpath Jackal, etc.

5. Compile and source:

   catkin build autoexpl
   source ../devel/setup.bash

NOTE: This Package can be configured to be used with other robots (simulation or physical robot) with minimal changes. Here we use turtlebot3 to showcase a simple example.

Example

After successful installation now we will launch a minimal example in on Turtlebot3 in a Maze environment.

Launch the environment

roslaunch autoexpl_simulations autoexpl_world.launch world:=docker

Launch the slam

roslaunch autoexpl_simulations autoexpl_slam.launch slam_methods:=karto

Launch the autonomous exploration nodes

roslaunch autoexpl_ros autonomous_exploration.launch

NOTE: As discussed in the paper, this approach is computationally expensive, we recommend using a high spec'd system or run small experiments on small arena.

Recommended Specs ( equivalent or higher )

• Processor - Intel i7
• RAM - 16GB
• Graphics Card - 4GB
• OS - Ubuntu 20.04 with ROS Noetic