Summary
TurtleBot comes with its own 3D vision system that is a low-cost laser scanner. The Kinect, ASUS, or PrimeSense devices can be mounted on the TurtleBot base and provide a 3D depth view of the environment. This chapter provides a comparison of these three types of sensors and identifies the software that is needed to operate them as ROS components. We check their operation by testing the sensor on TurtleBot in standalone mode. To use the devices, we can utilize Image Viewer or rviz to view image streams from the rgb or depth cameras.
The primary objective is for TurtleBot to see its surroundings and be able to autonomously navigate through them. First, TurtleBot is driven around in teleoperation mode to create a map of the environment. The map provides the room boundaries and obstacles so that TurtleBot's navigation algorithm, amcl, can plan a path through the environment from its start location to a user-defined goal.
In the next chapter, we will return to the ROS simulation world...