Story/Learning Goals

Originally, we all were interested in learning more about SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) and using ROS. While exploring different examples of SLAM during the first phase of project, we realized our constraints in both time and ability to compile a full SLAM package implemented in ROS with the 6 week timeframe. Therefore, we pivoted and decided to focus our project on creating a script which used the navigation algorithm A star that interfaced with pre-built mapping (gmapping) and simulation packages (turtlebot_stage). In addition to the map navigation and robot simulation, we also wanted to test our code on a real turtlebot platform to verify that our map and navigation algorithm yielded usable results. Overall, our goals for this project were to implement the A star algorithm in a python script for path planning and be able to utilize different ROS packages for map data collection and robot simulation.