Book Image

ROS Robotics By Example

Book Image

ROS Robotics By Example

Overview of this book

The visionaries who created ROS developed a framework for robotics centered on the commonality of robotic systems and exploited this commonality in ROS to expedite the development of future robotic systems. From the fundamental concepts to advanced practical experience, this book will provide you with an incremental knowledge of the ROS framework, the backbone of the robotics evolution. ROS standardizes many layers of robotics functionality from low-level device drivers to process control to message passing to software package management. This book provides step-by-step examples of mobile, armed, and flying robots, describing the ROS implementation as the basic model for other robots of these types. By controlling these robots, whether in simulation or in reality, you will use ROS to drive, move, and fly robots using ROS control.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
ROS Robotics By Example
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 5. Creating Your First Robot Arm (in Simulation)

In this chapter, you will begin to understand the control of robot arms with ROS. We begin with a simple three-link, two-joint articulated robotic arm in simulation. The simulated robot arm, rrbot, has two revolute joints that will help you to understand, without the complexities of more joints. We will use the URDF elements described in Chapter 2, Creating Your First Two-Wheeled Robot (in Simulation) and incorporate the advantages of Xacro to make our code more modular and efficient. We will also include a mesh design for our gripper, and add control elements for the arm and gripper to our URDF. Next, we will show various ways to control the robot arm in Gazebo.

In this chapter, you will learn:

  • The advantages of using Xacro in a URDF

  • How to design a three-link, two-joint robotic arm using Xacro and mesh files

  • How to control the arm in Gazebo using ROS commands and rqt

We begin by expanding your 3D modeling skills in order to create a robot...