BOTanica

An autonomous plant-inspired robot that seeks light, monitors its own environmental sensors, and navigates back to a charging dock when its battery runs low.

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Two-Device Architecture

BOTanica is a distributed system that runs on two physically separate computers mounted on the robot. They are connected over the local network and communicate exclusively through ROS topics.

Device	Role	ROS Distro	Code Lives In
Raspberry Pi	Low-level robot driver. Runs roscore. Talks to the DJI RoboMaster chassis over USB and exposes it as standard ROS topics (/cmd_vel, /odom, IMU).	Noetic	raspi/
NVIDIA Jetson	High-level "brain". Runs the state machine, sensor fusion, light-seeking behavior, GVF dock navigation, and battery/moisture monitoring. Subscribes to the Pi's topics and publishes velocity commands back.	Melodic	jetson/

The two devices are not interchangeable — each runs its own catkin workspace with its own packages, and the code in raspi/ will not run on the Jetson (and vice versa). The Jetson is configured to use the Pi as its ROS master via ROS_MASTER_URI.

   ┌──────────────────┐  ROS topics over LAN   ┌─────────────────────┐
   │   Raspberry Pi   │ ─────────────────────► │       Jetson        │
   │  (ROS Noetic)    │   /odom, /imu, ...     │   (ROS Melodic)     │
   │                  │ ◄───────────────────── │                     │
   │  roscore         │       /cmd_vel         │  botanica_brain     │
   │  robomaster_     │                        │  sensor_publisher   │
   │  driver_node     │                        │  cmd_vel_mux        │
   └──────────────────┘                        └─────────────────────┘
          │                                               │
          ▼                                               ▼
   DJI RoboMaster                              RealSense camera,
   chassis (USB)                               BLE sensors, OptiTrack

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Repository Layout

BOTanica/
├── jetson/                              # Runs on the Jetson (ROS Melodic)
│   ├── setup_ros_network.sh
│   └── src/
│       ├── light_follower/              # High-level brain package
│       │   ├── config/gvf_params.yaml   # GVF dock-navigation parameters
│       │   ├── launch/
│       │   │   ├── botanica_brain.launch
│       │   │   └── experiment.launch
│       │   ├── scripts/
│       │   │   ├── botanica_brain.py    # Main state machine
│       │   │   ├── cmd_vel_mux.py       # Multiplexes /cmd_vel sources
│       │   │   ├── experiment_logger.py
│       │   │   ├── light.py
│       │   │   ├── LP.py
│       │   │   └── pathPlanningLight.py
│       │   └── tests/test_botanica_brain.py
│       ├── sensor_publisher/            # BLE sensor → ROS bridge
│       │   ├── msg/SensorData.msg
│       │   ├── launch/sensor_system.launch
│       │   └── scripts/sensorInfo.py
│       └── librealsense/                # Vendored RealSense SDK
│
├── raspi/                               # Runs on the Raspberry Pi (ROS Noetic)
│   ├── setup_ros_network.sh
│   └── src/robomaster_driver/
│       ├── launch/
│       │   ├── robomaster_driver.launch
│       │   └── teleop.launch
│       ├── rviz/robomaster.rviz
│       └── src/
│           ├── robomaster_driver_node.py   # Live driver node
│           └── driver_OG.py                # Legacy reference
│
├── code/                                # Standalone scripts and prototypes
│   ├── Arduino code                     # Arduino sketch (charging dock?)
│   └── static_gvf_field.py
│
├── light-to-movement.py                 # Standalone light-tracking prototype
└── README.md

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Quick Start

On the Raspberry Pi

# Start the ROS master
roscore

# In a second shell, launch the RoboMaster driver
cd ~/BOTanica/raspi
source devel/setup.bash
roslaunch robomaster_driver robomaster_driver.launch

On the Jetson

# Point ROS at the Pi
export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://<PI_IP>:11311
export ROS_IP=<JETSON_IP>

cd ~/BOTanica/jetson
source devel/setup.bash

# Start the BLE sensor publisher
roslaunch sensor_publisher sensor_system.launch

# Start the brain
roslaunch light_follower botanica_brain.launch

The helper scripts jetson/setup_ros_network.sh and raspi/setup_ros_network.sh set the appropriate ROS_MASTER_URI / ROS_IP environment variables for each device.

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Behaviors

The brain (botanica_brain.py) is a priority-based state machine:

1. Battery low → navigate to dock via GVF (OptiTrack frame), then charge.
2. Soil moisture low → navigate to the watering station.
3. Otherwise → light-seeking: scan, identify the brightest direction, move toward it (odometry frame).

State transitions, scans, and dock arrivals are published as events through experiment_logger.py for offline analysis.

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Useful Topics

rostopic echo /sensor_data                # BLE sensor readings
rostopic echo /battery_level              # Battery state
rostopic echo /cmd_vel                    # Final velocity sent to chassis
rostopic echo /camera/color/image_raw     # RealSense color stream

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License

Apache 2.0. See LICENSE.