This chapter begins with some background on my thoughts as to what a robot is, and what robots are made of – a fairly standard list of parts and components. This chapter is designed to allow you to duplicate the exercises and use the source code that is found throughout the book. I thought you would appreciate information on how I set up my environments for development, what tools I use to create my code, and how I install the Robotic Operating System (ROS). We will also cover the assembly of TinMan, our robot hardware that I used for the development and testing of the code in this book. There are many types and configurations of robots that can work with our concepts and source code, with some minor modifications.
Topics covered in this chapter include the following:
- What is a robot?
- Robot anatomy – what are little robots made of?
- Software...