ROS Programming: Building Powerful Robots

Controlling the wheel velocity

Now, we can command the wheels of our robot using a joystick, publishing manually /cmd_vel topics or using navigation algorithms. Also, we can calculate the odometry of the vehicle and estimate its position; thanks to the encoder data. But have you checked whether your /sensor_velocity data is close to /cmd_vel command?

If you check our /cmd_vel command and the data from /sensor_velocity, you will see that they are not equal. You can try to set different gains in your /cmd_vel command functions to adjust the velocity command with your real velocity, but it is not the best way to do that. This solution will depend on your power supply, the weight of the vehicle, or the floor surface where you are driving the ...