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Introduction

Juniper was inspired by the excitement and learning I experienced in my first robotics class at Georgia Tech, CS 7785, Introduction to Robotics Research. This course is designed as an intensive introduction to the fundamental aspects of robotics, covering topics such as ROS 2, AI, computer vision, state machines, and mechanics. In the course, we were challenged to apply the concepts from lectures to a TurtleBot 3 within the lab. Eager to expand this experience and see my algorithms in action outside of the lab environment, I decided to build a similar robot. I created a robot similar to a TurtleBot 4, utilizing the iRobot Create 3 platform, and managed to keep the costs below $600. This project allowed me to further explore and test the algorithms I developed in a real-world setting!

Key Takeaways from this Project

It's often best to just take a step back if something is not working as intended. For example, when I was first configuring ROS in my home, my main computer couldn't see any of the topics from Juniper's computer. The domain ID matched, the middle-ware matched, and all ROS topics were working properly on my local computer and Juniper's computer. It turns out AT&T has multicast isolation built into the router. I had to boot up my old non-ISP router to get ROS topics working properly over Wi-Fi.

Relevant Projects with Juniper

As I am currently focusing on publishing the recent projects, most Juniper related projects are not available. However, most of my TurtleBot 3 code from my robotics class can be easily transferred to this robot. This involved object tracking/following, obstacle avoidance, and sign reading while traversing a maze.