How To Add A Motor Controller To Your ROS Robot

Give your robot straight, precise driving and odometry!

Perseverance rover wheels. Image courtesy NASA JPL/Caltech, public domain

If you are building a mobile robot for use with ROS/ROS2, one of the first things you need to do is integrate a motor controller. The purpose of the motor controller is to accept messages from higher level software, such as the navigation stack, and convert it into signals that drive the motors. It will also receive information…