Getting start with ROSARIA

After get ROS installed, let's get ARIA working. ARIA is an open-source software to communicate with ACOS (low-level control of our Pioneer3-AT). ROSARIA is name of ARIA package in ROS.

I came across this post about how to get ROSARIA install,
http://answers.ros.org/question/11962/require-help-using-rosaria/

I follow the recommended answer and got ROSARIA install successfully. There are some points that I would remind you, before you install the package as mentioned in the post you should go to your working folder first. If you follow the ROS tutorial as I recommended, your working folder is the "ros_workspace" folder in "home" directory. After ROSARIA package is installed, make sure you don't miss the "rosmake" part!, you will get folder "hg" in "ros_workspace".

Also note that the "teleop_base" path will not work as it is no longer support in ROS Electric, but don't worries we will talk about it later.

When everything is ready, let's try it out!

Step1: Safety first!

The most important thing in working with everything with moving part is safety! Take a look around and grab anything that can fit underneath your bot's belly to lift it up, all the wheels should not contact the ground and move freely. This is important because we don't know what gonna happen after we powered our robot for the first time or after we run a new piece of code.

Step2 : Connect to the robot

Now that your robot hang helplessly above ground it's a time to bring it to life! Get you RS-232 ready and plug it to the Pioneer DB9 socket, then plug another end to your computer (of course). Then power your bot up and release the emergency switch (the red button switch).

Step3 : First contact

First thing first, you need to figure out which communication port you are using. ROSARIA default value of port is ttyUSB0, for those USB-to-Serial converter. In my case it's old-school serial port ttyS0.

Bring up you terminal and go to your ROS workspace folder.

$ cd ros_workspace 

In first terminal, bring ROS up to work

$ roscore 

Leave the first terminal untouch and open another terminal and go to your workspace again, now run.

$ rosrun ROSARIA RosAria _port:=/dev/ttyS0

In above code, you may change the "/dev/ttyS0" part to your connected port such as "/dev/ttyUSB0", "/dev/ttyUSB1" or "/dev/ttyS1".

When you press enter, your robot should make a beep-beep sound and have something show-up in your terminal.

Congratulation! you just bring your robot up to life for the first time!