Book Image

Learning ROS for Robotics Programming

By : Aaron Martinez, Enrique Fernández
Book Image

Learning ROS for Robotics Programming

By: Aaron Martinez, Enrique Fernández

Overview of this book

<p>Both the amateur and the professional roboticist who has ever tried their hand at robotics programming will have faced with the cumbersome task of starting from scratch, usually reinventing the wheel. ROS comes with a great number of already working functionalities, and this book takes you from the first steps to the most elaborate designs possible within this software framework.</p> <p>"Learning ROS for Robotics Programming" is full of practical examples that will help you to understand the framework from the very beginning. Build your own robot applications in a simulated environment and share your knowledge with the large community supporting ROS.</p> <p>"Learning ROS for Robotics Programming" starts with the basic concepts and usage of ROS in a very straightforward and practical manner. It is a painless introduction to the fascinating world of robotics, covering sensor integration, modeling, simulation, computer vision, and navigation algorithms, among other topics.</p> <p>After the first two chapters, concepts like topics, messages, and nodes will become daily bread. Make your robot see with HD cameras, or navigate avoiding obstacles with range sensors. Furthermore, thanks to the contributions of the vast ROS community, your robot will be able to navigate autonomously, and even recognize and interact with you, in a matter of minutes.</p> <p>"Learning ROS for Robotics Programming" will give you all the background you need to know in order to start in the fascinating world of robotics and program your own robot. Simply, you put the limit!</p>
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Learning ROS for Robotics Programming
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Using a low-cost IMU – 10 degrees of freedom


In this section, we will learn to use a low-cost sensor with 10 degrees of freedom (DoF). This sensor, which is similar to Xsens MTi, has an accelerometer (x3), a magnetometer (x3), a barometer (x1), and a gyroscope (x3). It is controlled with a simple I2C interface, and in this example it will be connected to Arduino Nano (http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardNano).

This sensor is also used for similar uses. Xsens costs approximately $2,000, which is very expensive for normal users. The sensor explained in this section has an approximate cost of $20. The low price of this sensor permits its usage in a lot of projects.

You can see this sensor in the following image. It is thin and has few components.

This board has the following sensors:

  • ADXL345: This is a three-axis accelerometer with a high resolution (13-bit) measurement of up to ±16 g. This sensor is widely used in mobile device applications. It measures the static acceleration of gravity in...