The VMX-pi ROS Node for ROS Kinetic is currently under development. The VMX-pi ROS Node will provide access to low-level and high-level VMX-pi functionality either directly on the Raspberry Pi host, or remotely from a separate computer.
The VMX-pi ROS Node can provide both low-level control (e.g., control of digital IOs, access to IMU and CAN Bus) and also high-level control (kinematics-based control of drive trains). The envisioned high-level control portion would publish “IMU” and “Wheel Odometry Messages, with the goal of interoperating with the robot_pose_ekf ROS package to track robot position; the robot_pos_ekf package can also integrate Visual Odometry (VO), e.g., from an OpenCV Vision Processing applicaton.
Kauai Labs is still gathering final requirements for the VMX-pi ROS node, and we’d be happy to hear from you if you have any requirements. Please contact support@kauailabs.com if you have any questions, concerns or feature requests.