Book Image

Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming

By : Lentin Joseph
Book Image

Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming

By: Lentin Joseph

Overview of this book

The area of robotics is gaining huge momentum among corporate people, researchers, hobbyists, and students. The major challenge in robotics is its controlling software. The Robot Operating System (ROS) is a modular software platform to develop generic robotic applications. This book discusses the advanced concepts in robotics and how to program using ROS. It starts with deep overview of the ROS framework, which will give you a clear idea of how ROS really works. During the course of the book, you will learn how to build models of complex robots, and simulate and interface the robot using the ROS MoveIt motion planning library and ROS navigation stacks. After discussing robot manipulation and navigation in robots, you will get to grips with the interfacing I/O boards, sensors, and actuators of ROS. One of the essential ingredients of robots are vision sensors, and an entire chapter is dedicated to the vision sensor, its interfacing in ROS, and its programming. You will discuss the hardware interfacing and simulation of complex robot to ROS and ROS Industrial (Package used for interfacing industrial robots). Finally, you will get to know the best practices to follow when programming using ROS.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Creating MoveIt! configuration for an industrial robot


The procedure for creating the MoveIt! interface for industrial robots are same as the other ordinary robot manipulators except in some standard conventions. The following procedures give a clear idea about these standard conventions:

  • Launch the MoveIt! setup assistant using the following command:

    $ roslaunch moveit_setup_assistant setup_assistant.launch
    
  • Load the URDF from the robot description folder or convert xacro to URDF and load to the setup assistant

  • Create a Self-Collision matrix with Sampling Density about ~ 80,000. This value can increase the collision checking in the arm

  • Add a Virtual Joint matrix as shown in the following screenshot. Here the virtual and parent frame names are arbitrary.

    Figure 3: Adding MoveIt! - Virtual joints

  • In the next step, we are adding Planning Groups for manipulator and End Effector, here also the group names are arbitrary. The default plugin is KDL, we can change it even after creating the MoveIt! configuration...