RoverOS: Linking ROS with WebSocket for moblie robot

Abstract

With the rise of the Internet of Things(IoT), human-robot interaction between robots and humans has become one of the hotspots in the field of robotics. Thus, we present RoverOS, an integration WebSocket-based layer which provides bidirectional and stable connection among ROS system and Web client. RoverOS is a simple and uniform application implemented in Java, with which one allows users to control robot moving, get video data and navigate Turtlebot robot in a pre-existing map by the Web client. Basically it acts as an agent between clients and ROS system, forwarding messages via ros topics. RoverOS performance was tested on Turtlebot2 and Google browser. And RoverOS was shown to be efficient and stable.