As the ROS community is fast growing, new features and feasibility options are becoming available day-by-day in the world of ROS. Few days ago, while planning out and sourcing for an ongoing ROS Project, I came across one interesting app, ‘ROS – Mobile‘, in the android play store.
Even though this app and its features may not be new, this was the first time that it came to my notice. What it does ? How it works ? How can this be used ? those were all the questions in my mind, and what more better way to get answers for them, than to experiment with it and have fun while doing so.
Being intrigued by the concept of ROS – Mobile the best way to test it out was with any well-known and easily achievable ROS projects, and what better starter project than the ROS ‘Turtlesim‘.
While exploring the features of ROS – Mobile, I came across the Joystick configuration the app offered. This configuration was capable of generating geometry.msg/Twist type messages and publish them to any topic we desired.
After initializing the roscore and turtlesim node in the linux machine, I noted down the ROS MASTER URL:PORT and the ‘/turtle1/cmd_vel’ topic for publishing joystick data from ROS – Mobile.
I entered the ROS MASTER url:port & the topic to which the joystick data to be pubished, then connected the ROS – Mobile node to the ROS network through WAN and Viola !!!. We have a fully functional mobile joystick node connected to the turtlesim cmd_vel topic and control its movement.
It took me about 30 minutes to install, figure out and apply it. It’s simple and it’s easy and I recommend that you guys try this out and share your experiences here.