State Machine for Arbitrary Robots for Exploration and Inspection Tasks

Marco Steinbrink, Philipp Koch, Stefan May, Bernhard Jung, Michael Schmidpeter

Abstract: In this paper, a novel state machine for mobile robots is described that enables a direct use for exploration and inspection tasks. It offers a graphical user interface (GUI) to supervise the process and to issue commands if necessary. The state machine was developed for the open-source framework Robot Operating System (ROS) and can interface arbitrary algorithms for navigation and exploration. Interfaces to the commonly used ROS navigation stack and the explore_lite package are already included and can be utilized. In addition, routines for mapping and inspection can be added freely to adapt to the area of application. The state machine features a teleoperation mode to which it changes as soon as a respective command was issued. It also implements a software emergency stop and multiplexes all movement commands to the motor controller. To show the state machine's capabilities several simulations and real-world experiments are described in which it was used.