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Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming - Second Edition

By : Lentin Joseph, Jonathan Cacace

3 (2)

Buy this Book

Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming

3 (2)

By: Lentin Joseph, Jonathan Cacace

Buy this Book

Overview of this book

In this day and age, robotics has been gaining a lot of traction in various industries where consistency and perfection matter. Automation is achieved via robotic applications and various platforms that support robotics. The Robot Operating System (ROS) is a modular software platform to develop generic robotic applications. This book focuses on the most stable release of ROS (Kinetic Kame), discusses advanced concepts, and effectively teaches you programming using ROS. We begin with aninformative overview of the ROS framework, which will give you a clear idea of how ROS works. During the course of this book, you’ll learn to build models of complex robots, and simulate and interface the robot using the ROS MoveIt! motion planning library and ROS navigation stacks. Learn to leverage several ROS packages to embrace your robot models. After covering robot manipulation and navigation, you’ll get to grips with the interfacing I/O boards, sensors, and actuators of ROS. Vision sensors are a key component of robots, and an entire chapter is dedicated to the vision sensor and image elaboration, its interface in ROS and programming. You’ll also understand the hardware interface and simulation of complex robots to ROS and ROS Industrial. At the end of this book, you’ll discover the best practices to follow when programming using ROS.

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

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Free Chapter

Introduction to ROS

Why should we learn ROS?

Why we prefer ROS for robots

Why some do not prefer ROS for robots

Understanding the ROS filesystem level

Understanding the ROS computation graph level

ROS community level

What are the prerequisites for starting with ROS?

Questions

Summary

Getting Started with ROS Programming

Creating a ROS package

Adding custom msg and srv files

Working with ROS services

Creating launch files

Applications of topics, services, and actionlib

Maintaining the ROS package

Releasing your ROS package

Preparing the ROS package for the release

Releasing our package

Questions

Summary

Working with 3D Robot Modeling in ROS

ROS packages for robot modeling

Understanding robot modeling using URDF

Creating the ROS package for the robot description

Creating our first URDF model

Explaining the URDF file

Visualizing the 3D robot model in RViz

Adding physical and collision properties to a URDF model

Understanding robot modeling using xacro

Converting xacro to URDF

Creating the robot description for a seven DOF robot manipulator

Explaining the xacro model of the seven DOF arm

Creating a robot model for the differential drive mobile robot

Questions

Summary

Simulating Robots Using ROS and Gazebo

Simulating the robotic arm using Gazebo and ROS

Creating the robotic arm simulation model for Gazebo

Simulating the robotic arm with Xtion Pro

Moving robot joints using ROS controllers in Gazebo

Simulating a differential wheeled robot in Gazebo

Adding the ROS teleop node

Questions

Summary

Simulating Robots Using ROS and V-REP

Setting up V-REP with ROS

Understanding the vrep_plugin

Simulating the robotic arm using V-REP and ROS

Simulating a differential wheeled robot in V-REP

Questions

Summary

Using the ROS MoveIt! and Navigation Stack

Installing MoveIt!

Generating MoveIt! configuration package using the Setup Assistant tool

Motion planning of robot in RViz using MoveIt! configuration package

Understanding the ROS Navigation stack

Installing the ROS Navigation stack

Building a map using SLAM

Questions

Summary

Working with pluginlib, Nodelets, and Gazebo Plugins

Understanding pluginlib

Understanding ROS nodelets

Understanding the Gazebo plugins

Questions

Summary

Writing ROS Controllers and Visualization Plugins

Understanding ros_control packages

Writing a basic joint controller in ROS

Understanding the ROS visualization tool (RViz) and its plugins

Writing an RViz plugin for teleoperation

Questions

Summary

Interfacing I/O Boards, Sensors, and Actuators to ROS

Understanding the Arduino-ROS interface

What is the Arduino-ROS interface?

Interfacing non-Arduino boards to ROS

Interfacing DYNAMIXEL actuators to ROS

Questions

Summary

Programming Vision Sensors Using ROS, Open CV, and PCL

Understanding ROS – OpenCV interfacing packages

Understanding ROS - PCL interfacing packages

Interfacing USB webcams in ROS

Working with ROS camera calibration

Interfacing Kinect and Asus Xtion Pro in ROS

Interfacing Intel Real Sense camera with ROS

Interfacing Hokuyo Laser in ROS

Working with point cloud data

Working with AR Marker detection for object pose estimation

Questions

Summary

Building and Interfacing Differential Drive Mobile Robot Hardware in ROS

Introducing to Chefbot – a DIY mobile robot and its hardware configuration

Questions

Summary

Exploring the Advanced Capabilities of ROS-MoveIt!

Motion planning using the move_group C++ interface

Collision checking with a robot arm using MoveIt!

Working with perception using MoveIt! and Gazebo

Working with a robot pick-and-place task using MoveIt!

Understanding DYNAMIXEL ROS Servo controllers for robot hardware interfacing

Interfacing 7 DOF DYNAMIXEL-based robotic arm to ROS MoveIt!

Questions

Summary

Using ROS in MATLAB and Simulink

Getting started with MATLAB and MATLAB-ROS

Getting started with ROS and Simulink

Developing a simple control system in Simulink

Questions

Summary

ROS for Industrial Robots

Understanding ROS-Industrial packages

Installing ROS-Industrial packages

Block diagram of ROS-Industrial packages

Creating a URDF for an industrial robot

Creating the MoveIt! configuration for an industrial robot

Installing ROS-Industrial packages of Universal robotic arms

Understanding the Moveit! configuration of a Universal Robot arm

Getting started with real Universal Robots hardware and ROS-I

Working with MoveIt! configuration of ABB robots

Understanding the ROS-Industrial robot support packages

ROS-Industrial robot client package

ROS-Industrial robot driver package

Understanding the MoveIt! IKFast plugin

Creating the MoveIt! IKFast plugin for the ABB IRB 6640 robot

Creating the COLLADA file of a robot to work with OpenRave

Generating the IKFast CPP file for the IRB 6640 robot

Questions

Summary

Troubleshooting and Best Practices in ROS

Setting up RoboWare Studio in Ubuntu

Best practices in ROS

Best practices in the ROS package

Important troubleshooting tips in ROS

Questions

Summary

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Working with MoveIt! configuration of ABB robots

We will work with two of the most popular ABB industrial robot models: IRB 2400 and IRB 6640. The following are the images of these two robots and their specifications:

Figure 10: ABB IRB 2400 and IRB 6640

The specification of these robotic arms is given in the following table:

Robot	IRB 2400-10	IRB 6640-130
Working radius	1.55 m	3.2 m
Payload	12 kg	130 kg
Weight	380 kg	1,310-1,405 kg
Footprint	723x600 mm	1,107 x 720 mm

To work with ABB packages, clone the ROS packages of the robot into the catkin workspace. We can use the following command to do this task:

$ git clone https://github.com/ros-industrial/abb

Then, build the source packages using catkin_make. Alternatively, we can also install packages using the Ubuntu/Debian package management system. However, to follow the reminder...

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