A ROS~2-based Navigation and Simulation Stack for the Robotino

TL;DR

This paper presents a ROS2-based navigation and simulation stack for the Robotino platform, enabling effective localization and navigation in simulation and real-world logistics environments.

Contribution

Developed a ROS2 integration and simulation environment for Robotino with LIDAR sensors, enabling consistent navigation and localization using Nav2 packages.

Findings

Simulation results closely match real-world experiments

ROS2 Nav2 stack effectively enables Robotino navigation

Validated with multiple Robotinos in logistics tasks

Abstract

The Robotino, developed by Festo Didactic, serves as a versatile platform in education and research for mobile robotics tasks. However, there currently is no ROS2 integration for the Robotino available. In this paper, we describe our work on a Webots simulation environment for a Robotino platform extended by LIDAR sensors. A ROS2 integration and a pre-configured setup for localization and navigation using existing ROS packages from the Nav2 suite are provided. We validate our setup by comparing simulations with real-world experiments conducted by three Robotinos in a logistics environment in our lab. Additionally, we tested the setup using a ROS 2 hardware driver for the Robotino developed by team GRIPS of the RoboCup Logistics League. The results demonstrate the feasibility of using ROS2 and Nav2 for navigation tasks on the Robotino platform showing great consistency between simulation and real-world performance.