Caterpillar Rover

Hybrid Manual/Autonomous Bulldozer

A sand-collecting bulldozer robot with seamless switching between manual joystick control and ROS2-based autonomous operation.

---

Features

Feature	Description
Dual Mode Operation	Switch between manual and autonomous with a single button
Differential Drive	Tank-style movement with 4 drive motors
Bulldozer Mechanics	Lead screw (scoop height) + rope motor (tub angle)
Hall-Effect Odometry	4 wheel encoders for position tracking
BNO055 IMU	Accurate heading from 9-axis IMU
ROS2 Integration	Built on Jazzy, ready for SLAM and Nav2
Crater Detection (ML)	YOLOv5s-based crater detection using Hailo HAT

---

Architecture

Controller ESP32  ──ESP-NOW──►  ESP8266 (Motors)
                                    ▲
                                    │ ESP-NOW
                                    │
RPi (ROS2)  ───USB Serial/Blitz───► ESP32 (Sensor Hub)
    │
    ├── Blitz (packer/parser)
    ├── Odom Node
    ├── Mode Manager
    ├── Crater Detection (ML - Standalone)
    └── [Autonomous Stack]

Manual Mode: Controller → ESP8266 (direct)
Autonomous Mode: ROS2 → ESP32 → ESP8266

---

Quick Start

# Build
cd {path_to_workspace} && colcon build

# Launch
source {path_to_workspace}/install/setup.bash
ros2 launch rover manual.launch.py

---

ROS2 Topics

Topic	Direction	Purpose
/velocity	ROS→MCU	Drive commands (vy, vw)
/encoder_raw	MCU→ROS	Wheel encoder ticks
/bno	MCU→ROS	IMU orientation
/odom	Internal	Computed pose
/mode_switch	MCU→ROS	Manual/Auto toggle

---

Project Structure

src/
├── blitz/                  # Serial communication bridge
├── Crater_Detection/       # YOLOv5s crater detection (Hailo inference)
├── robot_interfaces/       # Custom ROS2 messages
├── rover/                  # Nodes and launch files
└── mcu_pio/                # ESP32 firmware (PlatformIO)

---

Documentation

See IMPLEMENTATION_PLAN.md for detailed architecture, wiring, and motor control mapping.

---