LCR Autonomous Ground Task Guide Level 3 - directedmachines/customer-support GitHub Wiki

Table of Contents

Overview

This is the third tutorial on autonomous tasks. It covers:

  • Waypoint path creation
  • route creation
  • connecting waypoint paths to work areas
  • converting a motion trace (LCR driven manual by user to trace property features) to waypoints

Safety

Please follow the recommendations below, it is critical you do so to reduce the chance of harm to living things and structures

  • Design work areas so they do not include known obstacles.
  • Add exclusion areas around known obstacles, with a 10ft margin between work area and paths, from the obstacles
  • Always observe the robot the first time you design a work area and be ready to stop it and adjust the work area and path if its getting too close to obstacles
  • Do not rely on the robot dynamic obstacle avoidance: The robot can not always see things, especially things close to ground or skinny posts.
  • Do not enable autonomy in areas where there are people and animals

Prerequisites

Troubleshooting

The AGT User Interface will display various warnings to aid the operator in resolving potentially unsafe plans, diagnosing issues with obstacles and robot health. Please review the AGT Troubleshooting Guide and search that page for any warnings you encounter, before contacting support.

Waypoint paths

Previous tutorials covered work areas which are used for open spaces of arbitrary shape. This tutorial covers the creation of a connected graph of waypoints useful when the LCR needs to navigate rows, roads, along fences or features.

Instructions

To create a waypoint path:

Touch / click on the Edit button to "unfreeze" the plan

Touch / click anywhere open on the map

Dialog comes up with options, select "Draw path"

Touch / click on the map where you want to lay down waypoints. These can be dragged and moved at any time

To finish path creation touch the last waypoint again, which will bring a dialog to "complete" the path

You can connect existing waypoints to each other or work areas

Video of path creation and connection to existing work area

Best practices

Ensure total length of all paths does not exceed 12 kilometers. This will ensure smooth planning when navigating.

Satellite images are out of date and of low resolution so placing waypoints using them is risky

Drive the robot in manual control, creating a trace, then use that trace to place waypoints and paths

Always observe the robot when laying out a new path and be ready to stop the task. Slight adjustments to plans are expected, required initialy

Be patient. Use the user interface slowly, use UNDO button when making a mistake.

Create different plans! Keep plans simple and close in space. Split large distance plans from local, detail oriented plans

Do not overlap paths. If you want to specify an order of visitation, use our "route" feature

You can zoom in two additional times when using the cloud to make plans, if you set the map mode to "map" instead of "satellite". Keep in mind though, that plans need to be designed so that at the highest SATELLITE zoom level there are small gaps in between Work Areas and Exclusion Areas. These gaps will appear different at different zoom levels so always keep that in mind. And still always assume 6ft of slop.

Bad Practices

Complex overlapping paths Plans with too many (over 10) waypoints. Create a new plan to capture waypoints not often used with each other Waypoints too close to physical obstacles or hazards. Keep a 10ft distance

Counter example below: Complex plan, overlapping edges, too large a span causing zoom to be very far to keep all waypoints in view:

Complex plan with overlapping paths, counter example to best practices

Pulling implements with restricted turn radius

The LCR can pull carts or various implements that require careful turns. For example, if there is a loose connection (chain) pulling the implement the LCR can not zero turn

To avoid the situation above, disable zero turn and set the turn velocity really low:

Touch / click on the Edit button to "unfreeze" the plan

Touch / click on Configure Task

Touch / click on the zero turn button, to disable it (circle becomes empty instead of green)

Touch / click on slider to set turn limit to 45 degrees / sec. Adjust lower if robot turns too sharply.

Reducing turn radius on polygon work areas

A big factor in pulling implements is to make work areas with obtuse interior angles, essential approximating circles or ellipses. The LCR will then trace the polygon without having to turn sharply

In the image below area A3 is preferred to A4.

Effect on path policy

With zero turn off the robot will take wider paths and will very likely miss part of the work area if the interior angles are too sharp or the task speed is set too high. For example:

Routes

A route specifies a sequence of waypoints (including work areas). The robot will visit the waypoints / work areas in the order they were added to the route.

For an example of a route plan heavily relying on OA when GPS was poor, click here.

Single Destination

The simplest route is a single destination which is done by simply clicking on a waypoint or the center of a work area.

Routes between two or more waypoints

Clearing a route

If a destination or route is already set, the first step is to clear the route

Touch / click anywhere on the map

Dialog comes up with options, select "Clear Route"

Specifying a route

The second step is to select the waypoints and destination to visit. The order you select them, defines the route

Touch / click on a waypoint or the center of a work area to start the route

Continue selecting other waypoints or work areas. For work areas touch the center circle, e.g "A0"

If you touch / click a waypoint already in the route, nothing happens.

Video with route clear and creation

Heatmap to Waypoints

Using the heatmap trace of where the LCR has been, you can trace an area or obstacle in real life, and then in the UI use the heatmap to place your waypoints, exclusion area, or work area. In CLOUD plan edit, the heatmap shows back 24 hours.

PHOTOS AND BRIEF TUTORIAL NEEDED HERE

Next Steps

Autonomous Task Guide, Level 4