Gostai Jazz

Jazz is a mobile telepresence robot developed by Gostai.

Its main features are:

A mobile base providing odometry, and linear/angular speed control.
8 ultrasonic sensors, 4 IR sensors
Optional high-end 30m range telemetric laser for autonomous navigation.
800x480 LCD screen
Wifi 802.11G
A USB2 port for extra accessories (cameras, modules…)
D510 1.66GHz processor with Linux OS (Ubuntu 10.04 server)
2 camera types: 1600 X 1200 – 30 FPS - Vision angle: 90° OR 720 x 576 – 25 FPS – Vision angle: 170°
A battery providing 5 hours of autonomy.
A charging dock. The robot is capable of docking itself automatically if positioned near its docking station.

Jazz is available in multiple versions. The Open Jazz version is specifically tailored for research purposes and comes with a SDK that provides a ROS interface.

Installation

ROS support is present on all Open Jazz with software version > 2.13. It just needs to be enabled by activating "ROS" on the "services" tab of the Jazz web configuration page.

Configuration

By default, a roscore will be started on the robot. Instructions for using a roscore on an other computer are available here.

Usage

ROS support in Jazz tries to use standard messages and interfaces as much as possible, to ease interoperability.

Urbi name	ROS topic	Dir	ROS message type
jazz.body.irs	/robot/body/irs	Pub	sensor_msgs/LaserScan
jazz.body.sonars	/robot/body/sonars	Pub	sensor_msgs/LaserScan
jazz.body.laser	/robot/body/laser	Pub	sensor_msgs/LaserScan
jazz.camera	/robot/body/head/camera	Pub	sensor_msgs/Image
jazz.body.head.pitch	/robot/body/head/pitch_out	Pub	std_msgs/Float32
jazz.body.head.pitch	/robot/body/head/pitch_in	Sub	std_msgs/Float32
jazz.body.head.yaw	/robot/body/head/yaw_out	Pub	std_msgs/Float32
jazz.body.head.yaw	/robot/body/head/yaw_in	Sub	std_msgs/Float32
jazz	/robot_in	Sub	geometry_msgs/Twist
	/robot_out	Pub	nav_msgs/Odometry
	/tf	Pub	tf/tfMessage

Documentation

The complete documentation for ROS support on Jazz is available here