NXT

ROS Software Maintainer: Tully Foote, Wim Meeussen, and Melonee Wise

NXT is a modular robotics kit manufactured by Lego. There are ROS interfaces for the default Lego firmware (v1.28) based on the NXT-python library by Douglas Lau.

The NXT-ROS software stack provides many useful tools to interface NXT robots with ROS. Currently NXT users can take robot models created with Lego Digital Designer, and automatically convert them into robot models compatible with ROS. The converted robot model can be visualized in rviz, and in the future we hope to add simulation capabilities in gazebo, our 3D simulator. The bridge between NXT and ROS creates a ROS topic for each motor and sensor of the NXT robot.

Once a robot is connected to ROS, you can start running applications such as the base controller, wheel odometry, keyboard/joystick teleoperation, and even assisted teleoperation using the ROS navigation stack. The NXT-ROS software stack includes a number of example robot models for users to play with and to get a feel for using NXT with ROS.

Contents

Installation

ROS Electric Release
ROS Diamondback Release (recommended)
ROS C Turtle Release

Library Overview

1. Basic Configuration

Capability	ROS package/stack
Robot-specific Messages	nxt_msgs
Robot model (URDF)	nxt_description, nxt_lxf2urdf, nxt_robots

2. Hardware Drivers and Simulation

Component	ROS package/stack
Actuator Drivers	nxt_controllers
Sensor Drivers	nxt_ros

3. High-Level Capabilities

Component	ROS package/stack
Teleop	nxt_teleop, nxt_assisted_teleop
Visualization	nxt_rviz_plugin

4. Sensor Drivers

nxt_ros supports the NXT accelerometer, color, contact, gyro, and range sensors.

Running

Please see testing your install.

Tutorials

Please see the NXT tutorials.

Support

Bug tracker.

Related Repositories

Have your own NXT/ROS libraries? Feel free to add your ros-pkg repository below.

foote-nxt