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

Summary


In this chapter we have seen several real robots from international companies and how to work with them in simulation. Here you can use all the background learnt in all the previous chapters of this book. Now you can play with almost the same tools and robots that the most important robotics institutions and companies develop.

We have shown several humanoid robots, such as REEM, PR2, and Robonaut. These robots allow you to grasp objects, since they incorporate arms in the torso. Similarly, they can move the head and you can focus on particular zones of the environment. All three include wheeled-driven robots, holonomic or not, and the developers of REEM and Robonaut also have biped robots. Indeed, REEM-C and R2 are legged robots that can walk.

Later we have shown other robotic platforms that only include a base with wheels and probably some supporting structures to attach sensors or an external laptop. This is the case of Husky and TurtleBot. In fact, TurtleBot is one of the cheapest...