James Bruton Has Developed an ROS Touchscreen Remote That You Can Build Yourself

While autonomous robots are all the rage these days, it is still quite common (and often preferable) to build robots that are controlled manually. To pilot those robots, you will, of course, need some sort of remote control. The most common solution is to use the same kind of RC transmitter that you’d use for an RC car or plane. Despite how great those are, they only offer limited customizability and are generally designed for direct control over a handful of radio channels. To control his ROS (Robot Operating System) robots, James Bruton recently developed a nifty touchscreen remote and he has made the designs available so that you can make one yourself.

Bruton has built all kinds of very impressive robots over the years and many of those are running on ROS. ROS offers all kinds of options for control, including simply connecting a keyboard to provide commands. The purpose of this remote design is to streamline that control with a portable, handheld input device. This remote connects wirelessly to the computer running ROS, so robots can be controlled from anywhere within the range of the WiFi network. The primary control inputs are a pair of three-axis joysticks, a trio of push buttons, and a big emergency shut-off button. The remote also has a touchscreen to display virtual inputs or a readout of the control commands, as well as a small Bluetooth keyboard for entering text commands.

The remote has roughly the same size footprint as a Nintendo Switch, though it is quite a bit thicker and the big joysticks protrude quite far from the case. That case is entirely 3D-printed and can be fabricated on any 3D printer. The control inputs are read by a Teensy 3.2 board, which connects to a Raspberry Pi via USB. Input commands are sent over serial to the Raspberry Pi, which then publishes control messages over WiFi to ROS running on a separate computer. The idea is that the remote will work with any ROS robot that Bruton builds in the future.

If that robot requires custom control inputs, a Python GUI can be created and displayed on the 7” touchscreen for the new functions. Power comes from a standard battery power bank strapped onto the back that can be quickly swapped out so the remote can be used pretty much indefinitely. The cost to build this remote would be approximately the same as purchasing a high-end RC transmitter, but it offers far more functionality and flexibility for controlling many types of robots.