BeeSoft User's Guide and Reference

11.1 Starting the BeeSoft Planner™

You can run the BeeSoft Planner from either :

The local console, that is the laptop or notebook computer mounted on the top of your robot, IF you have a B21 robot with the console computer installed;

               OR

On your own X-Windows workstation, connected to your robot via an Ethernet radio link, or radio modem and PPP. The Ethernet connection is highly recommended.

Before running the Planner, you need to establish an IP connection to your robot. Please note that the exact procedure for doing this is determined by the specific terminal program you are running.

1.Free up the serial console and serial port. To do this, log out from the serial console if you are logged on. Then, quit any terminal emulator program or any program you have attached to the serial port, for example, minicom.(Use <CTRL-A> <CTRL-Q> for minicom.)

2. Establish a PPP connection. Copy the script /etc/ppp/pppconnect from the robot onto your workstation. If you don’t know how to do this, ask the system administrator at your site. Run the script on your workstation. NOTE: Do NOT run this script on your robot!

This script will run on Linux workstations, and will also most likely run on any UNIX™ workstation. If your environment differs, or the script will not run, you’ll need to find out how to establish a PPP connection in your environment before proceeding. Ask your system administrator. This is the general procedure, though: Login as user ppp. The password you’ll need is aa6bb7cc.

Upon successful running of the script, you have established an IP connection to the robot.

3. Establish three windows:

Window#1: In this window, log in as demo, password aa1bb2cc. Then, telnet to <your-computer-name> (whatever name has been assigned to the computer on board your robot). Once telnetted to the robot, you’ll run bWatch (~bee/bin/bWatch), a program that allows you to monitor server activity, in this window. bWatch displays, every few seconds, a list of all processes running, and does so continually until you terminate it. To see the display of running processed at any given time displayed just once, use the program bCheck (~bee/bin/bCheck) instead.

Window#2: In this window, log in as demo, password aa1bb2cc. Then, telnet to <your-computer-name> (whatever name has been assigned to the computer on board your robot). Once telnetted to the robot, you’ll type commands in this window.

Window #3: In the third window, you’ll run the BeeSoft Planner.

To fire up the BeeSoft Planner, start up each of these programs:

In the window in which you are logged into the ROBOT (window #2):

 tcxServer
 baseServer
 colliServer

 sonarint -nodisplay
 map -nodisplay 

In the window in which you are logged into your WORKSTATION (window #3):

 plan -TCXHOST=<your-computer-name>

You’ll see the BeeSoft Planner display.

Figure 11-1 - The BeeSoft Planner™ Interface Display

Let’s take a brief tour of the Planner’s display. On the left, taking up most of the display,

is the plan window, showing the current occupancy map, over which planning information will be superimposed. Arrayed vertically along the right are a collection of control buttons. These control buttons let you operate your robot in either of two modes: autonomous goal-directed planning or autonomous exploration.