BasicMicro - Forums

Has anyone tried to use RoboClaw with Willow Garage ROS or other mainstream robotic framework? What I'm looking for is a higher level software driver for RoboClaw.

It looks to me that ROS is more tied to specific robots and not individual components like motor drivers/controllers. Do you have a list of supported motor controllers? I could not find it.

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Tech Support
Basic Micro - Robotic Technology Evolved

You are right, there seems to be no abstraction level in ROS directly corresponding to motor controller. The closest one is probably a robot base abstraction.

Assuming that a differential drive robot base is a natural application of RoboClaw controller, you could consider implementing ROS package for a generic differential drive robot. The closest example I found is ROS Package for the Serializer microcontroller made by the Robotics Connection http://www.ros.org/wiki/serializer or Husky A200 package http://www.ros.org/wiki/Robots/Husky. Both of them subscribe to velocity command messages and publish odometry, battery voltage, etc.

Frankly, a C/C++ motion control library would do it for me, so I don't have to go through low level command syntax, error checking, etc. I don't really care about ROS at the moment, but it may be of some interest to your customers.

I actually started on an ROS driver for the RoboClaw a few months back but didn't get too far. I'm getting back at it and I'll update when I have something substantial...