VDA5050 Interface for ROS 2?

Multi-Robot Systems
1

Hi everyone,

I have recently been exposed to the VDA5050 standard useful for communicating between AGVs. I am trying to learn how I can interface between a mobile robot running Nav2 and a Fleet Management Suite. I would like to know from the experienced people here, how the approach to the problem should be.

I figure that I have to have some sort of an interface node which translates between the different formats, so I am looking for more of a software architecture map - i.e., how this interface node would look like and where it fits in. Any subsequent reading material on this topic is also welcome.

I will keep updating this question with more information and a better representation of the thought process as it keeps going, and as I keep getting more answers from you guys.

Thanks a lot ! :smile:

2

I think you can find these posts useful:

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3

Hi @ljaniec thank you for the resources ! The VDA5050 connector package is all the more helpful because it contains the implementations in ROS 2.

Thanks again

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4

Hey everyone, thanks for all the help. I am currently in the process of writing a custom vda5050 connecor which takes in mqtt messages and transcribes them according to our needs. Does anyone know where I can find some valid VDA5050 messages to be able to validate the functionality of my node(s)?

The current idea is that I have an MQTT broker (localhost), which sends VDA5050 order messages and instantAction messages(I found some messages thanks to the tb3_adapter) over the required topics. I am currently struggling to find feedback messages - namely state and factsheet messages to be able to understand their structure and more importantly, the contents.

If someone can point me towards some resources on where I can generate some default VDA5050 messages, or have some messages to share with me (after having replaced all confidential info with something generic like “xxyyzzaabbcc”), I would greatly appreciate your help!

5

You can try to generate some appropriate messages with GitHub - coatyio/vda-5050-lib.js: Universal VDA 5050 library for Node.js and browsers. + PDF presentation about it: https://coatyio.github.io/vda-5050-lib.js/slides/vda-5050-typescript-javascript-library.pdf

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6

Hey everyone,
Does anyone know of any possible simulation that is run for an AGV fleet available open source that is run of the concepts and standards defined in VDA5050?
Thank you in advance.

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Hi,

The way I test my current VDA5050 implementation on a custom mobile robot is to use MQTT Explorer to send JSON data over to the robot in simulation. I had to define a custom VDA5050 interface layer in order to parse the commands and call the underlying sequences though.

There is an open issue on Open-RMF’s GitHub, but it has not seen a lot of activity in recent time, so I don’t know of anything that will allow you to set up a simulation without using some sort of interfacing layer.

8

Yes.

There is a lite simulator for VDA5050 GitHub - nvidia-isaac/isaac_mission_dispatch: VDA5050-compatible cloud service for fleet mission dispatch

Thanks.

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