Book Image

Hands-On ROS for Robotics Programming

By : Bernardo Ronquillo Japón
Book Image

Hands-On ROS for Robotics Programming

By: Bernardo Ronquillo Japón

Overview of this book

Connecting a physical robot to a robot simulation using the Robot Operating System (ROS) infrastructure is one of the most common challenges faced by ROS engineers. With this book, you'll learn how to simulate a robot in a virtual environment and achieve desired behavior in equivalent real-world scenarios. This book starts with an introduction to GoPiGo3 and the sensors and actuators with which it is equipped. You'll then work with GoPiGo3's digital twin by creating a 3D model from scratch and running a simulation in ROS using Gazebo. Next, the book will show you how to use GoPiGo3 to build and run an autonomous mobile robot that is aware of its surroundings. Finally, you'll find out how a robot can learn tasks that have not been programmed in the code but are acquired by observing its environment. You'll even cover topics such as deep learning and reinforcement learning. By the end of this robot programming book, you'll be well-versed with the basics of building specific-purpose applications in robotics and developing highly intelligent autonomous robots from scratch.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Section 1: Physical Robot Assembly and Testing
5
Section 2: Robot Simulation with Gazebo
8
Section 3: Autonomous Navigation Using SLAM
13
Section 4: Adaptive Robot Behavior Using Machine Learning

Understanding the GoPiGo3 robot

GoPiGo3 is a Raspberry Pi-based robot car manufactured by Dexter Industries. It is intended to be used as an educational kit for learning about both robotics and programming, two complementary perspectives that clearly show the transversal knowledge you should acquire to become a robotics engineer. We'll explain what this means by letting Nicole Parrot, Director of Engineering at Modular Robotics, explain it in her own words:

"The GoPiGo originated from a Kickstarter campaign in early 2014 when the Raspberry Pi was still somewhat new. The first users were hobbyists, but soon teachers and coding club volunteers were sharing their GoPiGo with their students. This lead to various changes being made to the board to make a classroom-ready robot. It's robust, it has a full list of features, and it's still based on the Raspberry Pi...