RoboCup@Home VizBox

The RoboCup@Home VizBox is a little webserver @Home robots can run to vizualize what is going on.

The main page shows

• an outline of the current challenge and where the robot is in the story of that challenge.
• Subtitles of what the robot and operator just said; their conversation
• Images of what the robot sees or a visualisation of the robot's world model, eg. camera images, it's map, anything to make clear what is going on to the audience.

Additionally, the server accepts HTTP POSTs to which a command sentence can be submitted on /command

Backends

The server abstracts over the underlying robot via a Backend. A backend accepts messages from the robot's internals. A message is forwarded to the web page via websockets.

Currently, only a ROS backend is implemented:

Subscriptions:

• operator_text std_msgs/String What the robot has heard the operator say
• robot_text std_msgs/String What the robot itself is saying
• challenge_step std_msgs/UInt32 Active item index in the plan or action sequence the robot is executing.
• image sensor_msgs/Image Image of what the robo sees or anything else interesting to the audience

Publications

• command std_msgs/String Command HTTP POSTed to the robot.

TODO

• Allow robot to push action sequence and challenge name to server. Allows for GPSR action sequences etc.

Installation and try out

git clone https://github.com/RoboCupAtHome/vizbox.git
cd vizbox
sudo pip install -r requirements.txt

roscore # in separate terminal
./server.py image:=/usb_cam/image_raw # Remaps the image-topic to output of the USB cam, see below

Open The web page on localhost

To reproduce the the screenshot:

roslaunch usb_cam usb_cam-test.launch # separate terminal
rostopic pub /challenge_step std_msgs/UInt32 "data: 0" --once
rostopic pub /robot_text std_msgs/String "data: 'Hello operator'" --once
rostopic pub /operator_text std_msgs/String "data: 'Robot, follow me'" --once
rostopic pub /robot_text std_msgs/String "data: 'OK, I will follow you'" --once;
rostopic pub /challenge_step std_msgs/UInt32 "data: 1" --once

POST commands

Use

http -f POST localhost:8888/command command="Robot, follow me"

(Using the very handy HTTPie utility) to get a publication on the /command topic

Buttons

Buttons are pushing messages in next_step topic.

To see pushed messages use :

rostopic echo next_step # separate terminal

To change messages, modify the values of CMD_BTN1 and CMD_BTN2 at the beginning of server.py