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

Summary


In this chapter, we described a real and popular robot called Baxter, manufactured by Rethink Robotics Corporation. Many of the details of the robot can be discovered using Baxter Simulator that displays the simulated Baxter using the Gazebo program. Since Baxter has two movable arms, much of the chapter text describes the arms and control of the arms.

The chapter started with a description of Baxter in both the research and the manufacturing versions. Baxter's arms and sensors and the control modes for the arms were described.

After downloading the Baxter Simulator software, the simulator was used to demonstrate various examples of control of Baxter with Python scripts supplied by Rethink Robotics. Baxter can be controlled by ROS commands, by the keyboard, or with a joystick. We have also included several Python scripts that will make the control of Baxter easier if joint angles are specified for movement of the arms.

The ROS frame transform package tf was used to show the relationship...