The Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering organized a ‘Six-Day Hands-On Workshop on ROS-1 and Mobile Robotics’, under CoE in Robotics and Industrial Automation, on 06th March 2023. Students got to know about the basics of Raspberry Pi, ROS Software, Linux based commands and Gazebo Simulation, through this training programme. This Workshop was coordinated by Dr. Soumya Sundar Pattanayak (AP/ECE) and Mr. L. David William Raj (AP/ECE). 60 students from ECE, ISE, CSE and AI/ML participated in this Workshop.
The programme began at 10.00 am. The dignitaries on the stage were Dr. P. Mahabaleswarappa (Principal, MVJCE) and Mr. Jegathesan Shanmugam (Lead Robotic Engineer, AIRBUS). The opening remarks for the Workshop were given by Dr. P. Mahabaleswarappa. He gave a glimpse of the Robotics related activities going on in MVJ College of Engineering.
Day-1 (06.03.2023)
The first session of the first day commenced with the lecture of Mr. Jegathesan Shanmugam, Lead Robotic Engineer, AIRBUS. He started by giving an introduction on Robot Operating System-1, and discussed how to install Ubuntu 20.04.
In the next session, he dealt with Linux Basics using the command line interface, file manipulation, package management and many more.
Day-2 (07.03.2023)
The morning session of Day-2 started at 10.30 am. This session was also handled by Mr. Jegathesan Shanmugam. It was a hands-on training on ROS Basics such as ROS nodes, ROS parameter server, ROS environment variables, ROS core, ROS topics, ROS services and ROS actions, and this continued into the afternoon session, too.
Day-3 (08.03.2023)
The 3rd day session started at 10.00 am, with Dr. P. Mahabaleswarappa (Principal, MVJCE) and Mr. Shyam Ganatra (Founder of Kamadhenu Robotics) on the stage. The opening remarks for this session were given by Dr. P. Mahabaleswarappa.
Mr. Shyam Ganatra then took over, with an Introduction to Gazebo, the various features of Gazebo, including physics engines, sensors and actuator models.
Day-4 (09.03.2023)
The 4th day programme started at 10.30 am, with Mr. Shyam Ganatra giving hands-on training to the students, on Gazebo’s graphical user interface to create, edit, and run simulations.
In the afternoon session, he taught the students how to use the GUI to create worlds and models, set up sensors and actuators and monitor simulation results. He also discussed the role of Gzserver and Gzclient in Gazebo simulation, and how they interact with each other.
Day-5 (10.03.2023)
The 5th day programme started at 10.30 am, with Mr. Shyam Ganatra giving hands-on training on RVIZ Simulation. In this session, he discussed about how to launch RVIZ from the command line, and explained the different command line options that can be used to configure RVIZ and how to add elements to RVIZ, such as robot models, sensor data and markers.
In the next session, he discussed how to configure these elements, and how to control their behavior in RVIZ. He provided an overview of the RVIZ interface, including the panels and views available in RVIZ. He explained how to navigate the RVIZ interface, and how to change the layout of the interface.
Day-6 (11.03.2023)
The last day session started at 10.00 am. The dignitaries on the stage were Dr. P. Mahabaleswarappa (Principal, MVJCE) and Dr. Balamuralidhar P (Chief Scienctist and Head of Robotics and Automation Research Lab, TCS Research).
Dr. Balamuralidhar P started the session by addressing the current trends in robotics, scope in research and job opportunities in this field for the graduate students.
Outcomes:
- Students learnt about the various applications in defence.
- They learnt about Linux commands and Raspberry Pi.
- They gained knowledge on ROS software and Gazebo simulation.