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

PR2 – the Willow Garage robot


PR2 is the mobile manipulation robot developed by Willow Garage, the developers of ROS. The robot is equipped with two arms and a head with stereo cameras for long and short distances, as well as a tilting laser.

Installing the PR2 simulator

We can install R2 using a Debian binary directly with the following command:

sudo apt-get install ros-fuerte-nasa-r2-simulator

Alternatively, we can install from sources by following these instructions.

To use the PR2 simulator, which uses Gazebo and the URDF model of the PR2 robot, just run the following:

sudo apt-get install ros-groovy-pr2-simulator

This will install several stacks and packages that allow you to move the robot and control its arms. This functionality is required by some demos not included in this book, for example, one that shows how to open doors with the PR2 robot.

Note that for the PR2 we also require ROS Groovy, although you can try other distributions. Even more important is to use a new version of...