ROS 2 Summer Updates

Hey everyone,

After a productive summer for us at Hello Robot, I wanted to reach out to everyone with the updates we have made over the last few months. With the onset of fall and in the spirit of shedding the old and preparing for the new, Stretch is making more and more progress in ROS 2.

Updated Sensor Support:

We now support Stretch’s two main visual sensors, the RPLidar A1 and the D435i RGBD camera in ROS 2.

The RPlidar package has been updated and is ready to integrate with your applications. Here is a link to the updated launch file. In a terminal execute the following commands:
Terminal 1:

ros2 launch stretch_core stretch_driver.launch.py

Terminal 2:

ros2 launch stretch_core rplidar.launch.py

Likewise, the D435i is now fully supported and ready for action. Get started with this launch file or execute the following commands:
Terminal 1:

ros2 launch stretch_core stretch_driver.launch.py

Terminal 2:

ros2 launch stretch_core d435i_basic.launch.py

To visualize the output of these sensors in RViz, execute the following command:

ros2 run rviz2 rviz2 -d `ros2 pkg prefix --share stretch_calibration`/rviz/stretch_simple_test.rviz

Stretch Calibration:

The stretch calibration package allows you to generate a calibrated URDF of the robot so that Stretch has a better representation of itself and is able to execute tasks with higher accuracy. If you have not calibrated your robot in a while, it’s time to do it. Follow the readme to know how.

Keyboard Teleop:

Tele-operating Stretch is fun and we don’t want you to miss out once you make the big move to ROS 2. Find the updated script here or execute the following commands:
Terminal 1:

ros2 launch stretch_core stretch_driver.launch.py

Terminal 2:

ros2 run stretch_core keyboard_teleop

ROS 2 Tutorials:

If you are unfamiliar with ROS 2 but are eager to make the move, we also have a set of ROS 2 tutorials to get you started with using the RPLidar and more! Have a look at the tutorial series here.

With that, I invite all of you to test the updates on your robots and reach out to us with feedback!

If you wish to stay on top of things, you can follow the stretch_ros2 repo as we continue to make updates to the ROS 2 stack.

Happy fall y’all!
Chintan

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