I think the image only works on Pi3B/Pi3B+ processors - which prior to the “great dearth” of Raspberry Pi was the preferred and standard processor for the GoPiGo3. (No success for my Pi4 attempts)
BTW, the image is doubly compressed (tar then gz) - did you uncompress it twice to get down to the .img level and then feed that to the Raspberry Pi Imager (based on your reply before editing )
What imager/version did you use?
I tried with the Raspberry Pi Imager 1.8.1, selecting Pi4, this tar.gz, and my SD card - but the Pi4 boots to a bootloader that does not recognize the SD card as having a bootable image.
If so, you should have seen something like this on the screen:
No, the imager will extract from gz files, but I didn’t realize that it wouldn’t extract from a tar.gz. Good catch.
Yes - bummer.
The image came right up on a Pi3 , but the keyboard map was wrong - that one makes things tough.
It appears there are no Pi4 images for Mate 18.04.4 to be found, and no Pi4 images of Ubuntu 18.04.4 desktop.
I found an Ubuntu 18.04.5 64-bit Server for Pi4. I should be able to install GoPiGo3 software with no gui, and then hopefully add ROS Melodic.
(Not that I wouldn’t prefer new folks to go for ROS 2, but I understand the structure of the book gives good hand-holding and all the background needed for someone totally new to the ROS / ROS 2 world.)
I’ve learned not to be optimistic with last ditch efforts. If perchance I manage to build a usable image, I will ask for you to see if you are able to burn it and configure it for your WiFi. I can test most everything else. (I may have to modify my approach and use 20.04 with Noetic - 18.04 anything for Pi4 is tough to find.)