Oct 20, 2022Autonomous Drone Flight with Behavior Trees, AirSim-js and NodejsUsing behavior trees for autonomous drone mission execution — Recently I needed to define and execute several missions for a multirotor drone in the AirSim simulation environment. My plan, use Nodejs and the open-source AirSim-js client library to connect with and control autonomous drones hosted in an AirSim session. That was the easy part. Next I needed a strategy…Behavior Trees6 min readBehavior Trees6 min read
Aug 31, 2022What’s new in AirSim-js 0.3 for TypeScriptAirSim-js 0.3 was released yesterday (20220830) with several enhancements to simplify working with the AirSim TypeScript api. In this article we will introduce the key improvements of version 0.3.0. If you are new to AirSim-js see this getting-started introduction. AirSim constructor arguments Let’s start by looking at an improvement in the AirSim client…Airsim4 min readAirsim4 min read
Jul 20, 2022Introducing AirSim-jsRecently I released AirSim-js, an open-source Nodejs client for AirSim (Aerial Informatics and Robotics Simulation). In this article I’ll introduce you to the cool AirSim environment and how to programmatically drive a car within AirSim using TypeScript and the AirSim-js package. Background If you’re new to AirSim, it’s an open-source 3D…7 min read7 min read
Feb 11, 2022Introducing The rclnodejs-cli Tools for ROS 2 JavaScript CodersFor developers interested in implementing ROS 2 solutions using JavaScript or TypeScript, the rclnodejs package (ROS client library nodejs) provides a complete Nodejs JavaScript binding and TypeScript declarations to the ROS 2 API. A companion Nodejs package rclnodejs-cli, was released last year to provide commandline tools to help when using…5 min read5 min read
Jun 30, 2021Visualize Robot Status Using a Programmable blink(1) RGB LEDThis article introduces the programmable blink(1) USB RGB LED and develops a simple cross platform TypeScript/Nodejs program that can be used to visually communicating a robot’s state on a microcontroller such as the Raspberry Pi. Recently I began developing a small self balancing robot powered by a Raspberry Pi 4…Blink16 min readBlink16 min read
Jun 23, 20205: ROS 2 Version of Conway’s Game of Life in TypeScriptImplement Conway’s Game of Life using ROS 2 OccupancyMap and rviz2 for visualization. As a fun project to help me get familiar with the ROS 2 OccupancyMap message, I coded up Conway’s Game of Life algorithm using an OccupancyMap to model the cellular automaton world. …Ros24 min readRos24 min read
Jun 19, 2020Member-only4: Data Visualization Using ROS 2 rviz2 and Pub-Sub CommunicationsSimulate, publish and visualize ROS 2 LIDAR sensor data using TypeScript. Edited 20220211 — expanded Nodejs version prerequisites to v10.22–17.x In this tutorial we get closer to a real world scenario as we learn about ROS message interfaces, in particular the LaserScan sensor message, and how to create and publish…Robots6 min readRobots6 min read
Jun 14, 20203: Creating a ROS 2 Pub-Sub Subscription using TypeScriptIn this tutorial, we implement a ROS 2 subscription using TypeScript and learn to use the ros2 topic CLI tool for listening in on and testing pub-sub communications. edited 20220211 — upgraded to use NodeJS 16 In tutorial #2 we learned about ROS 2’s publish-subscribe communication mode and how to…Ros25 min readRos25 min read
Jun 11, 20202: Our 1st ROS 2 TypeScript ProgramJoin along as we develop a high level introduction of ROS while coding up our first ROS2 JavaScript program, a simple ROS node that sends ‘hello world’ messages using a Twitter style publish-subscribe model. edited 20220211 — updated to use NodeJS 16, TypeScript 4.5 & rclnodejs-cli ROS 2 Conceptual Overview ROS 2 is a…Ros26 min readRos26 min read
Jun 5, 20201: Setup A ROS 2 JavaScript Robot Coding EnvironmentWhile coding robots can be fun, setting up a robot coding environment can sort of be a pain. In this article we layout the software bits you’ll need. …Ros 24 min readRos 24 min read
