Design and implementation of an ROS based autonomous navigation system

The presented work describes how to implement an autonomous navigation system on wheeled mobile robots based on Robot Operating System (ROS). ROS contains many reusable software stacks and we have analyzed location issues, map building and autonomous navigation packages in this work. With regard to our own designed robot, the hardware and software architectures are presented. Besides, robotic kinematics of motion has been discussed for the four-wheel differential drive mechanism of our robot. An inertial measurement unit is used to assist in providing a more accurate odometry model and precisely localizing robot itself within the world during the process of navigation. Experimental results carried out with a service robot are shown in this paper to demonstrate the performance of the designed system.