University Rover Challenge: Tutorials and Team Survey

Abstract

In this tutorial chapter we present a guide to building a robot through 11 tutorials. We prescribe simple software solutions to build a wheeled robot and manipulator arm that can autonomously drive and be remotely controlled. These tutorials are what worked for several teams at the University Rover Challenge 2017 (URC). Certain tutorials provide a quick start guide to using existing Robot Operating System (ROS) tools. Others are new contributions, or explain challenging topics such as wireless communication and robot administration. We also present the results of an original survey of 8 competing teams to gather information about trends in URC’s community, which consists of hundreds of university students on over 80 teams. Additional topics include satellite mapping of robot location (mapviz), GPS integration (original code) to autonomous navigation (move_base), and more. We hope to promote collaboration and code reuse.