Comparative Study of ROS on Embedded System for a Mobile Robot

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative study of Robot Operating System (ROS) packages for mobile robot navigation on an embedded system. ROS provides various libraries and tools in developing complex robot software. We discuss the process of porting ROS to an open embedded platform, which serves as the main controller for a mobile robot. In the case of driving the robot, ROS provides local path planners such as the base, elastic band, and timed elastic band. The local planners are compared and analyzed in terms of accuracy in tracking the global path conducted on a robot model using Gazebo, 3D simulation tool provided by ROS. We also discussed the difference in performance of deploying ROS packages on a personal computer and on the embedded environment. Experiments were performed by controlling two different mobile robots with results showing that tracking error is highly dependent on the goal tolerance. This study will serve as a promising metric in improving the performance of mobile robots using ROS navigation packages.