Book Image

ROS Programming: Building Powerful Robots

By : Anil Mahtani, Aaron Martinez, Enrique Fernandez Perdomo, Luis Sánchez, Lentin Joseph
Book Image

ROS Programming: Building Powerful Robots

By: Anil Mahtani, Aaron Martinez, Enrique Fernandez Perdomo, Luis Sánchez, Lentin Joseph

Overview of this book

This learning path is designed to help you program and build your robots using open source ROS libraries and tools. We start with the installation and basic concepts, then continue with the more complex modules available in ROS, such as sensor and actuator integration (drivers), navigation and mapping (so you can create an autonomous mobile robot), manipulation, computer vision, perception in 3D with PCL, and more. We then discuss advanced concepts in robotics and how to program using ROS. You'll get a 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. We'll go through great projects such as building a self-driving car, an autonomous mobile robot, and image recognition using deep learning and ROS. You can find beginner, intermediate, and expert ROS robotics applications inside! It includes content from the following Packt products: ? Effective Robotics Programming with ROS - Third Edition ? Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming ? ROS Robotics Projects
Table of Contents (37 chapters)
Title page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Preface
Bibliography
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 device...