Book Image

Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming

By : Lentin Joseph
Book Image

Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming

By: Lentin Joseph

Overview of this book

The area of robotics is gaining huge momentum among corporate people, researchers, hobbyists, and students. The major challenge in robotics is its controlling software. The Robot Operating System (ROS) is a modular software platform to develop generic robotic applications. This book discusses the advanced concepts in robotics and how to program using ROS. It starts with deep overview of the ROS framework, which will give you a clear idea of how ROS really works. During the course of the book, you will learn how to build models of complex robots, and simulate and interface the robot using the ROS MoveIt motion planning library and ROS navigation stacks. After discussing robot manipulation and navigation in robots, you will get to grips with the interfacing I/O boards, sensors, and actuators of ROS. One of the essential ingredients of robots are vision sensors, and an entire chapter is dedicated to the vision sensor, its interfacing in ROS, and its programming. You will discuss the hardware interfacing and simulation of complex robot to ROS and ROS Industrial (Package used for interfacing industrial robots). Finally, you will get to know the best practices to follow when programming using ROS.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Interfacing Hokuyo Laser in ROS


We can interface different ranges of laser scanners in ROS. One of the popular laser scanner available in the market is Hokuyo Laser scanner (http://www.robotshop.com/en/hokuyo-utm-03lx-laser-scanning-rangefinder.html).

Figure 14: Different series of Hokuyo laser scanner

One of the commonly used Hokuyo laser scanner models is UTM-30LX. This sensor is fast and accurate, suitable for robotic applications. The device has USB 2.0 interface for communication, and has up to 30 meter range with millimeter resolution. The arc range of the scan is about 270 degrees.

Figure 15 : Hokuyo UTM-30LX

There is already a driver available in ROS for interfacing these scanners. One of the interfaces is called hokuyo_node (http://wiki.ros.org/hokuyo_node).

We can install this package using the following command:

  • In Jade:

    $ sudo apt-get install ros-jade-hokuyo-node
    
  • In Indigo:

    $ sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-hokuyo-node
    

When the device connects to the Ubuntu system, it will create a...