Connect React native application to my robot with bluetooth

asked 2023-01-14 08:03:22 -0600

vanmalleghema gravatar image

Hello guys,

I'm working on an outdoor robot. For now, the user interacts with the robot as follow :

  1. Connection to the robot hotspot with your smartphone
  2. Use the simple Web UI with your browser on your smartphone

To do so, I used the rosbridge_suite package of ROS noetic.

I don't like this way of working because it isn't totally transparent. I like the way your smartphone is always connected to your smart watch transparently using bluetooth. In addition to it, I would like to create a real smartphone application (Android + IOS) instead of a web based application.

So my question is : what is the best way to connect this smartphone application (in react native) to my ROS robot using bluetooth ? Is there some ros package, a bit like rosbridge_suite, to deal with this use case ?

Thanks in advance for your response.

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Could you clarify what you mean by "this isn't totally transparent"?

gvdhoorn gravatar image gvdhoorn  ( 2023-01-14 10:17:56 -0600 )edit

With bluetooth, your smartphone can be connected to several devices in parallel and the reconnection is transparent while with an hotspot you can't be connected to a wifi in the same time and so the user of the smartphone will have to reconnect to the hotspot each time he wants to interact with the robot... I believe it isn't the best user experience.

vanmalleghema gravatar image vanmalleghema  ( 2023-01-15 06:29:01 -0600 )edit
1

I'm not sure I necessarily agree, but: easiest would probably be to use Bluetooth to setup a network connection between your robot and your phone. As soon as you have IP working, everything else you already have should also work (ie: rosbridge, etc).

gvdhoorn gravatar image gvdhoorn  ( 2023-01-16 02:30:37 -0600 )edit

Thanks for your answer ! Can you explain to me why you disagree ? In addition, can you provide a link or a tutorial on how to create this network connection over bluetooth ?

vanmalleghema gravatar image vanmalleghema  ( 2023-01-16 15:05:00 -0600 )edit

re: tutorial: it's an OS-level configuration task. You're likely to find information on the Ubuntu (or whatever your OS is) documentation site. Same for your mobile device/OS.

gvdhoorn gravatar image gvdhoorn  ( 2023-01-17 02:03:53 -0600 )edit
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