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...