Book Image

ROS Robotics By Example, Second Edition - Second Edition

By : Carol Fairchild, Lentin Joseph, Dr. Thomas L. Harman
Book Image

ROS Robotics By Example, Second Edition - Second Edition

By: Carol Fairchild, Lentin Joseph, Dr. Thomas L. Harman

Overview of this book

ROS is a robust robotics framework that works regardless of hardware architecture or hardware origin. It standardizes most layers of robotics functionality from device drivers to process control and message passing to software package management. But apart from just plain functionality, ROS is a great platform to learn about robotics itself and to simulate, as well as actually build, your first robots. This does not mean that ROS is a platform for students and other beginners; on the contrary, ROS is used all over the robotics industry to implement flying, walking and diving robots, yet implementation is always straightforward, and never dependent on the hardware itself. ROS Robotics has been the standard introduction to ROS for potential professionals and hobbyists alike since the original edition came out; the second edition adds a gradual introduction to all the goodness available with the Kinetic Kame release. By providing you with step-by-step examples including manipulator arms and flying robots, the authors introduce you to the new features. The book is intensely practical, with space given to theory only when absolutely necessary. By the end of this book, you will have hands-on experience on controlling robots with the best possible framework.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
ROS Robotics By Example Second Edition
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
Index

Chapter 7. Making a Robot Fly

Today, flying vehicles are very popular. Even in their primary configuration, controlled by a radio controller, some flying vehicles can be considered robots that respond to their environment to stay in the air. Flying robots that have altitude sensors can hover in place. If they have Global Positioning System (GPS) sensors, they know where they are and can fly to a specific location. As more sensors are added, their capabilities increase.

As you will see in this chapter, there are some commonalities between mobile robots and flying robots in terms of their command and control. ROS utilizes these commonalities in the structure of the nodes, topics, messages, and services of these two categories of robots. The topic cmd_vel, which was used for Turtlesim and TurtleBot earlier in this book, is again used for the simulated and real quadrotors presented in this chapter. For sensors and devices that are common between mobile robots and flying robots, ROS takes advantage...