Book Image

Learning ROS for Robotics Programming

By : Aaron Martinez, Enrique Fernández
Book Image

Learning ROS for Robotics Programming

By: Aaron Martinez, Enrique Fernández

Overview of this book

<p>Both the amateur and the professional roboticist who has ever tried their hand at robotics programming will have faced with the cumbersome task of starting from scratch, usually reinventing the wheel. ROS comes with a great number of already working functionalities, and this book takes you from the first steps to the most elaborate designs possible within this software framework.</p> <p>"Learning ROS for Robotics Programming" is full of practical examples that will help you to understand the framework from the very beginning. Build your own robot applications in a simulated environment and share your knowledge with the large community supporting ROS.</p> <p>"Learning ROS for Robotics Programming" starts with the basic concepts and usage of ROS in a very straightforward and practical manner. It is a painless introduction to the fascinating world of robotics, covering sensor integration, modeling, simulation, computer vision, and navigation algorithms, among other topics.</p> <p>After the first two chapters, concepts like topics, messages, and nodes will become daily bread. Make your robot see with HD cameras, or navigate avoiding obstacles with range sensors. Furthermore, thanks to the contributions of the vast ROS community, your robot will be able to navigate autonomously, and even recognize and interact with you, in a matter of minutes.</p> <p>"Learning ROS for Robotics Programming" will give you all the background you need to know in order to start in the fascinating world of robotics and program your own robot. Simply, you put the limit!</p>
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Learning ROS for Robotics Programming
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 4. Using Sensors and Actuators with ROS

When you think of a robot, you would probably think of human-size robots with arms, a lot of sensors, and a wide field of locomotion systems.

Now that we know how to write small programs in ROS and manage them, we are going to work with sensors and actuators, something that can interact with the real world.

You can find a wide list of supported devices by ROS at http://www.ros.org/wiki/Sensors.

In this chapter, we will deal with the following:

  • Cheap and common sensors for your projects

  • 3D sensors as Kinect and laser rangefinders

  • Using Arduino to connect more sensors or actuators

We know that it is impossible to explain all types of sensors in this chapter. For this reason, we have selected some of the most commonly used ones and those which are affordable for most users—regular, sporadic, or amateur.

Sensors and actuators can be organized in different categories: rangefinders, cameras, pose estimation devices, and so on. These will help you find the...