May 12, 2025
To explore the navigation capabilities of the Stretch robot, we followed the Nav2 tutorial. After creating a map by teleoperating the robot around the room and using it's LiDAR sensor, we were then able to set navigation goals and watch the robot move itself around the room. Since positioning the robot next to a chair is important for our project, we created the map of the room with a chair in the center, allowing us to set a navigation goal near the chair as shown in the video below:
Navigation around a space is less important for our project, since our robot would typically be used in a single enclosed space (a clinic, room, etc). Our physical therapy exercises will also be anchored around the fixed point of the patient sitting in a chair. For our project, we could use navigation to scan the room for an ArUco marker placed on a chair, and then use an align_with_aruco script to bring the robot to our desired position.Â