Robots available for anonymous, remote access

ROS Projects
1

I have two robots available anonymously:

  1. https://rerobots.net/sandbox/multi_kobuki
  2. https://rerobots.net/sandbox/scott/sZrusTBc8xk6axM6CQVcLg

If you visit a link above and the robot is available, you will get 15 minutes of exclusive access to it.

The first is a Kobuki with a Hokuyo LiDAR described at https://help.rerobots.net/workspaces/multi_kobuki.html. Safety constraints are imposed, in particular:

  1. initially, the only permitted motion command is reverse, to get off of the charging pad;
  2. then, the robot can be driven freely within the center area.

The second is a TurtleBot3 on a lift (wheels cannot move).

Both have ROS Melodic installed. This is work in progress. Comments welcome!

1 Like
2

I see you get a root login on the robot. How do you solve security?

3

Access is from within LXD or Docker containers (so, not actually a root login). The serial connection to the Kobuki is through a proxy that checks messages for integrity against the Kobuki bytestream protocol.

Security is a big disussion. At the moment, I think the main risk is DoS via someone writing a very large file. If you find something else, I would be interested to learn it!

4

thanks for all of the interest! I will add that:

  1. the robots are available via SSH (so, no need to use the sandbox UI).
  2. there is a CLI and Python client library for requesting instances, managing access etc.
  3. you can share your own robots through the same infrastructure; the client side is open source.

The above requires an account at https://rerobots.net. It is not generally available yet; if you are interested, please ask.