telegram_ros

Bridges between a Telegram conversation and ROS.

Only a single Telegram user can send and receive text, images and locations to/from the ROS bridge. A user must send the /start command to start a conversation. A new user can then /start as well and take over. Once connected, a user can type /stop to disconnect

Currently, there is no authentication (Issue #6)

Installation (from source)

Go to the src directory of your catkin workspace and clone the package from github:

git clone https://github.com/tue-robotics/telegram_ros.git

Install the required dependencies:

rosdep install --from-path -y -i telegram_ros

Compile your workspace

catkin build # or catkin_make (make sure to refresh your workspace env afterwards)

Create a bot

If you don’t have a bot yet, chat to BotFather in Telegram to create one. You can provide a name for your bot and you will receive the API token.

Run

rosrun telegram_ros telegram_ros_bridge _token:="YourToken:FromBotFather"

rosparam set /telegram_ros_bridge/whitelist '[1, 2]'  # For the chat IDs that should be allowed

ROS API

Topics

Output

• message_to_ros (std_msgs/String)
• image_to_ros (sensor_msgs/Image)
• location_to_ros (sensor_msgs/NavSatFix)

Input

• message_from_ros (std_msgs/String)
• image_from_ros (sensor_msgs/Image)
• location_from_ros (sensor_msgs/NavSatFix)

Parameters

• ~token (string): Telegram BOT API token
• ~caption_as_frame_id (bool): Whether to put the caption of the image in the frame_id (default: False)
• ~whitelist (bool or list): False when everyone can use the bot or a list of telegram user IDs that are allowed to talk with the bot (default: False)