Book Image

ROS Robotics By Example, Second Edition - Second Edition

By : Carol Fairchild, Lentin Joseph, Dr. Thomas L. Harman
Book Image

ROS Robotics By Example, Second Edition - Second Edition

By: Carol Fairchild, Lentin Joseph, Dr. Thomas L. Harman

Overview of this book

ROS is a robust robotics framework that works regardless of hardware architecture or hardware origin. It standardizes most layers of robotics functionality from device drivers to process control and message passing to software package management. But apart from just plain functionality, ROS is a great platform to learn about robotics itself and to simulate, as well as actually build, your first robots. This does not mean that ROS is a platform for students and other beginners; on the contrary, ROS is used all over the robotics industry to implement flying, walking and diving robots, yet implementation is always straightforward, and never dependent on the hardware itself. ROS Robotics has been the standard introduction to ROS for potential professionals and hobbyists alike since the original edition came out; the second edition adds a gradual introduction to all the goodness available with the Kinetic Kame release. By providing you with step-by-step examples including manipulator arms and flying robots, the authors introduce you to the new features. The book is intensely practical, with space given to theory only when absolutely necessary. By the end of this book, you will have hands-on experience on controlling robots with the best possible framework.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
ROS Robotics By Example Second Edition
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
Index

Setting up the mission


For the Kinect, our workstation computer requires us to run Protonect prior to using the kinect2_bridge software. If you have trouble launching the kinect2_bridge software, use the following command before you begin:

$ ./libfreenect2/build/bin/Protonect

Verify that Protonect shows color, depth, and IR images and that none of the screens are black. Be aware that Protonect has three optional parameters: cl (for OpenCL), gl (for OpenGL) or cpu (for CPU support). These options can be useful for testing the Kinect v2 operation.

If Protonect has successfully brought up the Kinect image, then press Ctrl + C to close this window. The kinect2_bridge and kinect2_viewer should then work properly until the system is restarted.

Next, we must determine how to identify our robots within the frame of the Kinect image.

Detecting Crazyflie and a target

For our Crazyflie and target location, we have prepared markers to uniquely identify them in our lab environment. For the Crazyflie, we...