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Connecting to the robot

During the whole lab make sure only one of the members connected to the robot!

For in-lab desktop computers, proceed to the next section.

For VMWare users: Internet connection availability

Make sure that you have a working internet connection; for instance go ahead and ping google.ca:

  • Open a terminal and run: which ping
  • Output should be something like this: /usr/bin/ping
  • If you don't have ping go ahead and install it: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install net-tools iputils-ping
  • If you already have it or you installed it go ahead with pinging google so you double check you have internet: ping google.ca
  • The response should be like this: 64 bytes from yyz10s20-in-f3.1e100.net (142.251.41.67): icmp_seq=5 ttl=117 time=3.97 ms
  • Make sure you do not have latency more than 30 ms.

If you do not have the robohub directory in ~/, clone the robohub/turtlebot4 repository which contains the vpn for connecting to the bots:

cd ~
mkdir robohub
cd robohub 
git clone https://git.uwaterloo.ca/robohub/turtlebot4.git

Once you found/created robohub folder, go to the turtlebot4 repo location, and change to the rendezvous branch.

cd ~/robohub/turtlebot4
git checkout rendezvous

Check that you have the .fastdds.xml file on your computer. you can do so by

ls /home/$USER -a | grep .fastdds.xml

if not then move the following configs into your home directory

 cp /home/$USER/robohub/turtlebot4/configs/.fastdds.xml /home/$USER/

For in-lab desktop computers and VMWare users: Connect to robot via VPN

Based on the List of groups excel sheet on LEARN, find your robot number and connect to it. Make sure the robot is turned on (it is by default on when docked).

  • Suppose that X is your robot number, open a terminal and run:
cd ~/robohub/turtlebot4/
./rendezvous_vpn/vpn.sh X
  • Output should contain: Remote Reachable
  • Ask one of the TAs to enter the required password.
  • Enter your credentials as required and the ouput of the terminal should contain: Tunnel ready
  • If output contains: Address already in use. Make sure that you are trying to connect to the turtlebot you are assigned to according to the excel sheet.
ATTENTION!! This process requires the entire terminal, so KEEP this VPN terminal open and open a new tab/new terminal and follow with the rest.Each time you open a new terminal remember to source the bashrc in the configs, and declare your ros2 domain.

To do this:

  • source the .bashrc file: source ~/robohub/turtlebot4/configs/.bashrc
  • Declare ros2 domain: export ROS_DOMAIN_ID=X
  • Wait for a few seconds and try viewing your topics: ros2 topic list
  • Output should be a long list of topics, a short list containing the following topics only, means that you still cannot view the robot's topics:
/parameter_events
/rosout
  • If you couldn't see the robot's topics, try viewing the topics again. If not, try restarting the ros2 daemon: ros2 daemon stop and re-run ros2 topic list. If still you couldn't see the topics, do not close any terminals and let the TAs know.

For VMWare users: Permanent environment set up file

If you want to avoid having to source bashrc file and declaring ros2 domain each time you open a new terminal, you can also do the following:

  • In a new terminal, go to home/$USER
  • Create the following file by (you can use vim or any other text editor, such as nano, gedit): gedit .tb4_env
  • Add the following lines:
source ~/robohub/turtlebot4/configs/.bashrc
export ROS_DOMAIN_ID=X
  • Then add the following file to your bashrc: source ~/.tb4_env This is a temporary line you add to your bashrc for connection to tb4, when you want to work with your system at home, you should comment it by # characater.

Once you are able to see the topics, let the TAs know so you can move to the next step!!