My next step is to get setting way points to work and I have got a couple of questions,
do I have to (must) place the fiducials to the ceiling? (my ceiling is very high so , too high and dangerous for me to stick them on the ceiling.)
is it possible that I can leave the camera position as forward ? will set way points and map navigation still work that way? I can have the fiducials (markers) up at the camera eye level around my area to map
Can I set way points using the mobile app? ( I tried voice command āset waypointā and it doesnt do anythingā¦)
I look forward to your replies on my queries and concerns, thank you
The system was meant to work in the general case you are describing but all of our focus so far for full fiducial navigation has been around use of ceiling fiducials.
I cannot say I know of anyone using the front camera yet but there may be person(s) on this board that may have worked in that mode.
Sorry, I donāt have experience in using the front camera for a full navigation mode, only for locating and moving towards some specific goal such as in our follow demo app but that is not a mapping application.
Well Iām proposing it to navigate outdoor where there are more space , which there is no ceiling but the sky ā¦, so Iām confused on how ceiling mode is going to work anyway with upward camera, so Iām thinking of using forward camera and want to know if it works with navigation, mapping and set waypoints as well, in the promotional youtube video, the lady in there just told Magni to go to the library and Magni went off but I dont see any ceiling or any fiducial markers there, so Iām confused on how it is done that way, letās see what @davecrawley has come back with ā¦,
also, at first, Magni was following the lady, so does that mean she had the fiducial 49 marker stuck on behind her back? ā¦if so, it would be challenging for her to stick a sign at her back on her jacketā¦ , Iām still scratching my head on these,
There are two different general types of navigation being demonstrated with the woman in the video and you are correct neither is ceiling fiducials of course.
Keep in mind the Magni platform is a platform that we encourage people to make the product for solution they have decided fits their needs. That video is showing some very simple things and not very exact forms of navigation.
The video is also not trying to sell specific demo software as a product solution.
Anyway, the go to the library part is likely the sort of thing that somebody would use that uses simple crude āodometryā navigation where somebody could drive Magni to the front of the library for example then tell Robot Commander that is a waypoint called āthe libraryā. They then could drive back across that courtyard all the time being in Robot Commander. Then they could say Magni go to the Library. Robot Commander was a demo program, never a fully tested product offering. I think it is still around, not sure if it runs still, have not tired it for a long time myself. Odometry is very inaccurate but is fun to mess with. Any sort of wheel slipping throws it off.
I myself would be tempted to put a GPS module on the robot and then have a ROS application or python that knows how to talk to the Magni in standard ROS way to tell it to turn or rotate or drive. Then knowing where the library is would be more accurate for such a long ways to drive and if GPS was accurate enough to get you near the entrance.
Other solutions that involve an actual āmapā may use a Lidar that is powerful enough to work outside. That is common on many outside navigating robots.
The second sort of thing being shown as an example was magni following somebody. That we do have a demo program and yes a fiducial would have to be on the back of somebody. I donāt know if they actually did that in the video or not but we certainly do that as a sort of fun demo. Again keep in mind it is a demo and not a product. I think you know about this but it is explained here https://learn.ubiquityrobotics.com/fiducial_follow
For your earlier real question on fiducials and use of forward camera I will let others on the team that may know about a customer that has used the general solution to fiducial navigation using the front facing camera. I just have not tried that myself.
Ok, that the promotional video of the lady and the library, whole thing is misleading thenā¦,
I thought it can do it that way like what the lady did, (she didnt hold any phone , or run any app on her hand ) and magni went to the libary (and Magni in the video has no Lidar as wellā¦) , this is very very misleading ā¦i really dont see a point in that video then if it is not exactly how Magni could run in real life, IT IS VERY MISLEADING, and misconception! I thought Magni would work like that out of the box (reason I purchased, because it says in the website, GET TO YOUR ROBOT APPLICATION 2 YEARS FASTER.) ā¦, but infact, there are still alot lots of work needs to be done to get to where that video is up toā¦( you said you need a GPS module, a Lidar and more more coding in ROSā¦)
This is very misleadingā¦, so that Lady is just an actor, (in real life she needs to take out a phone, press the mic button, to tell Magni to stop first because you cannot tell Magni to stop without the Robot commander app , and I dont know whatās the point of her saying āgo to libraryāā¦because after that she will need to use the app to drive Magni to the library (Magni in that state would have no way of going to the Library by itselfā¦) ā¦, all of these are misconception and hidden in the video ā¦, i dont think this is ethical in how you sell your product, you should only show only , only on what the product can do and its features in honestyā¦,
I find this very misleading and misconception as well, after what you have told me ā¦, its unbelievableā¦
Oh. I am asking another member of the key team members to reply to this post.
Sorry it was not what you expected.
We sell an OEM solution so customers do not have to fully develop the mechanical and full ROS compatible software systems that a great many robots base their product upon.
Development of this standard open source platform does save companies a few years but they still have to add whatever specific software is required for their own full solution.
Iām not in marketing myself and am an engineer. Sorry you feel badly. We will have to sort it out somehow. Take Care and I ask for some patience as this may take a few weeks because some key members are on summer vacation right now. Thank you for your understanding.
Well the promotional video of the lady and Magni going to library by itself is deceiving at first and dishonesty on the product that gave me false hope on Magni , itās not my expectation , itās the fact what this video on your website is telling me what it can do, but in fact it is not , I know you are not the marketer , but I put my trust on your website and now this is really putting me off , providing on top of Magni, I pay more taxes just to get that to me , and Iām very disappointed at how Magni which I got now does not match what it can do in your promotional video on your website , this needs to be escalated for sure !! Australia has fair trading. @mjstn2011@davecrawley@rohbotics Your key team needs to sort this out on how I can make Magni navigate outside with no ceiling (like in your promotional videos ), this is critical to my solution on my projects.
I think this just refers to the part where you donāt have to source and integrate the actual wheels, frame, power, camera, and software/drivers for those that one would need to when usually making a custom robot. Itās still a pretty wild claim indeed.
This is actually false, there is a ROS package of ours called dnn_detect that is capable of finding humans on camera in real time while running locally on a Pi. While Iām not sure where the actual follow script is, it shouldnāt be hard to recreate (Iāve actually been prototyping usage of it with an ESP32-cam video source recently, and that one somewhat works even despite significant command lag that a Magni would not have). As far as I know thatās generally what was used in that video as well.
And yes I agree, the video is pretty misleading but it from what I understand it was intended more as an imaginary example of what could be done with the robot if some time was invested.
Now for your use case specifically when you have longer distances and more free form of movement Iād agree with Markās suggestion of using a GPS. The simplest version would be to buy a ROS compatible usb module and then choose a nav stack that supports GPS tracking and sonar collision avoidance. Then youād need a microphone and some sort of speech processor, perhaps integrating Mycroft which would give you soemthing far more useful than just the usual go-to commands.
We do offer consulting services, so we could potentially help you out on the project with custom code as well.
so I have been misleadedā¦, I just frustrated on why it takes so long to get a proper answer,
so there is more to it behind that video on how magni follows the lady , it is just not fruduicial follow demo then because from you said, Magni did not rely on Fiducial markers to follow the human ,
shouldnt this dnn_detect app be included with purchase of Magni and I have to pay extras for it?? it does not make sense to meā¦
And, how does one know looking at that video is imaginary (it does not state from the beginning of the video that this is imaginary functions of Magni ), Iām very disappointed on how misleading it is,
since you admit it that your promotional video is misleading and got mislead by @mjstn2011 , and you are asking me to pay for your consulting services? (you need to understand that it is NOT my fault that I got mislead ok ā¦) and you are not helping me to achieve what Magni could do out of the box in that misleading video?
Well the code is open source and free to use, you donāt have to pay anything for it, as goes for almost all of our code.
And not just ours, but there are tons and tons of free ROS packages that are excellent at what they do, they just need to be integrated together into a final product.
Now in general we try to develop as many useful generic pieces of code and packages that can be assembled into a final solution by end users of our robots, even Robot Commander which is a full app in itself. If you donāt have the skills to do it then well, we can give you a hand for a price, but thatās your choice. We prefer if people can manage it themselves.
This is after all a magni-base not a magni-finished-general-purpose-robot-that-does-whatever-people-mean-it-to.
I dont agree as Iām not asking whatever I want Magni to be or to do, Iām being reasonable here, I just needed guidance or how to set up the way that your misleading video has told me ,
response to my voice command without using the app or anything, (like how the lady did in the videoā¦)
navigate outside, for example to the library, which your misleading video has misleaded me to think that magni could do it out of the box,
so what is done in the misleading video, the codes should be integrated into Magni , so what is the point of showing the customer what it can do but these codes are not integrated into Magni, this is not saving time for the customer, the customer still needs to invest tonnes of time and effort to get it to work along with extra hardwares, to be able to perform like what the misleading video has shown,
these should be included with Magni because its what your video is telling me and your website is telling me, I DIDNT imagine this myself!
I have requested our company owner to talk to you directly to sort out all of this and hopefully find a good resolution to this unfortunate misunderstanding. A phone call seems to be the best approach at this time. I will keep asking till the call happens. He is extremely busy but did say he would be willing to contact you.
I do wish to go on record to say that I was not false in my statement that I thought it was fiducial follow and I thought it might be robot commander. I never said it was those because I did not know what was used and was not present or involved in the video to show people the things that are possible.
Fiducial follow is used in most of Davids live demos and Robot Commander was a sort of experimental app but it was able to do simple movements in a room. They are both demos things we post on our github to help people get started. I was trying to tell you what I would do to do those sort of base movements. I further know as a fact it was not dnn_detect being used but that is not a bad idea to realize that sort of following and I think it is somewhere on our repository but it is much more complex than fiducial follow or robot commander app. The response that said it may be dnn_detect was also in good faith and he was either misinformed or just guessing like I was.
So not to worry we are trying to get this sorted out with you from the very top.
Thanks for your patience,
Mark
@mjstn2011, now Iām even more frustrated, it is not dnn_detect and its not fiducial , then how did Magni went to the library after receiving the voice command in your video demo thenā¦,
The video supposed to show what your robot can do , but what you are basically telling me is that the video shows an āimaginaryā product, buy it and you need to spend alot more to purchase this and that and figure out heaps more coding inorder to be like this imaginary product, it just frustrates me and doesnt make sense. Yes and please sort this out for me. What I believe is that the navigation functions/system should work right out of the box as how your promotional video has demonstrated, (thatās how hours and hours are saved, not the other way around).
I fully agree with inmoov on this matter. I was very impressed with the promotional video that made me bought the Magni. I too was looking for the āMagni go to libraryā demo code, and now feel very disappointed that the video is just fictional advertisement and no demo code exist that can do such thing. Hope Ubiquityrobotics can spend some effort providing the demo code to us soon.
I will repeat but this time with details. There is demo code to demonstrate those sort of things.
One is called fiducial follow and one is an android app called Robot Commander that controls the Magni. Neither is a fully finished and polished product, both are to give customers a head start to do things they want Magni to do.
Also note that we are going to make it more clear to people so we donāt get disappointed buyers. Our intent was not to mislead, it was to show people the sorts of things that can be done.
The Magni platform is to give people a head start to develop their own applications. the video makes that very clear but we must be too close to the product and did not do a good job making that clear enough. We are sorry that happened. When you watched some videos in the clip you thought that was what the product was about. We are sorry you got this idea and we are now going to make it much more clear to avoid any other customers getting the wrong idea and then feeling badly.
As I discussed one way to make magni go somewhere is using our phone app called āRobot Commanderā. This is really demo sort of app but it also has built in a control panel to manually move Magni with a simple user interface.
Again, we are taking actions to make things much more clear directly with the video which will take a little time of course but we are acting to keep any sort of misunderstanding from happening so you have helped us understand this and it will be addressed . Thank you
@mjstn2011@davecrawley Two main words of reply : DISAPPOINTED (at how Magni was promoted) and Sad (I will need to invest more more time and lots more money on top)
