Book Image

ROS Robotics By Example

Book Image

ROS Robotics By Example

Overview of this book

The visionaries who created ROS developed a framework for robotics centered on the commonality of robotic systems and exploited this commonality in ROS to expedite the development of future robotic systems. From the fundamental concepts to advanced practical experience, this book will provide you with an incremental knowledge of the ROS framework, the backbone of the robotics evolution. ROS standardizes many layers of robotics functionality from low-level device drivers to process control to message passing to software package management. This book provides step-by-step examples of mobile, armed, and flying robots, describing the ROS implementation as the basic model for other robots of these types. By controlling these robots, whether in simulation or in reality, you will use ROS to drive, move, and fly robots using ROS control.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
ROS Robotics By Example
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 8. Controlling Your Robots with External Devices

In the past few chapters, we have used ROS to control mobile, armed, flying, and simulated robots. The similarities and differences between these robots have been discussed and we have shown the commonality that ROS has created between all these robot types. Commonality is not only in the structure of the software and the communications methods, but also in the simulation environment and the tools used for visualization and analysis.

The influence of ROS goes even further to provide a common interface to control devices external to the robot. These devices include game controllers (gamepads and joystick controllers), mobile devices (smart phones and tablets), and even controller boards (the Arduino and Raspberry Pi).

In this chapter, you will learn about the following topics:

  • Adding a game controller to a robot

  • Using mobile devices to control robot projects

  • Interfacing controller boards such as Arduino or Raspberry Pi