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

Chapter 4. The Navigation Stack - Robot Setups

In this chapter, you will learn what is probably one of the most powerful features in ROS, something that will let you move our robot autonomously.

Thanks to the community and the shared code, ROS has many algorithms that can be used for navigation.

First of all, in this chapter, you will learn all the necessary ways to configure the navigation stack with your robot. In the next chapter, you will learn how to configure and launch the navigation stack on the simulated robot, giving goals and configuring some parameters to get the best results. In particular, we will cover the following topics in this chapter:

  • Introduction to the navigation stacks and their powerful capabilities-clearly one of the greatest pieces of software that comes with ROS.
  • The tf library-showing the transformation of one physical element to the other from the frame; for example, the data received using a sensor or the command for the desired position of an actuator. tf is a...