Book Image

Learning Robotics using Python - Second Edition

By : Lentin Joseph
Book Image

Learning Robotics using Python - Second Edition

By: Lentin Joseph

Overview of this book

Robot Operating System (ROS) is one of the most popular robotics software frameworks in research and industry. It has various features for implementing different capabilities in a robot without implementing them from scratch. This book starts by showing you the fundamentals of ROS so you understand the basics of differential robots. Then, you'll learn about robot modeling and how to design and simulate it using ROS. Moving on, we'll design robot hardware and interfacing actuators. Then, you'll learn to configure and program depth sensors and LIDARs using ROS. Finally, you'll create a GUI for your robot using the Qt framework. By the end of this tutorial, you'll have a clear idea of how to integrate and assemble everything into a robot and how to bundle the software package.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Working with Dynamixel actuators

Dynamixel is a kind of networked actuator for robots developed by the Korean manufacture, ROBOTIS. It is widely used by companies, universities, and hobbyists due to its versatile expansion capability, power feedback function, position, speed, internal temperature, input voltage, and so on.

The Dynamixel servos can be connected in a daisy chain; it is a method of connecting devices in a serial fashion, connecting one device to another through the connected devices, and can control all the connected servos from one controller. Dynamixel servos communicate via RS485 or TTL. The list of available Dynamixel servos is given at http://www.robotis.com/xe/dynamixel_en.

The interfacing of Dynamixel is very easy. Dynamixel comes with a controller called USB2Dyanmixel, which will convert a USB to Dynamixel compatible TTL/RS485 levels. The following diagram...