Book Image

Learning ROS for Robotics Programming

By : Aaron Martinez, Enrique Fernández
Book Image

Learning ROS for Robotics Programming

By: Aaron Martinez, Enrique Fernández

Overview of this book

<p>Both the amateur and the professional roboticist who has ever tried their hand at robotics programming will have faced with the cumbersome task of starting from scratch, usually reinventing the wheel. ROS comes with a great number of already working functionalities, and this book takes you from the first steps to the most elaborate designs possible within this software framework.</p> <p>"Learning ROS for Robotics Programming" is full of practical examples that will help you to understand the framework from the very beginning. Build your own robot applications in a simulated environment and share your knowledge with the large community supporting ROS.</p> <p>"Learning ROS for Robotics Programming" starts with the basic concepts and usage of ROS in a very straightforward and practical manner. It is a painless introduction to the fascinating world of robotics, covering sensor integration, modeling, simulation, computer vision, and navigation algorithms, among other topics.</p> <p>After the first two chapters, concepts like topics, messages, and nodes will become daily bread. Make your robot see with HD cameras, or navigate avoiding obstacles with range sensors. Furthermore, thanks to the contributions of the vast ROS community, your robot will be able to navigate autonomously, and even recognize and interact with you, in a matter of minutes.</p> <p>"Learning ROS for Robotics Programming" will give you all the background you need to know in order to start in the fascinating world of robotics and program your own robot. Simply, you put the limit!</p>
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Learning ROS for Robotics Programming
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

REEM – the humanoid of PAL Robotics


REEM is a 1.65m humanoid service robot created by PAL Robotics. This robot is one of several humanoid robots developed by the company. In brief, it designs two kinds of humanoids: bipeds and differential drive robots. REEM is the last version of their differential driver robots and it is one of the state-of-the-art robots of its kind. It has an autonomous navigation system, a user-friendly touchscreen on the chest for Human Robot Interaction (HRI), and it incorporates a voice and face recognition system.

REEM is meant to help and entertain people in most public environments such as hotels, museums, shopping malls, airports, and hospitals. It can also transport small packages, and operate as a dynamic information point offering a great variety of multimedia applications such as display an interactive map of the surrounding area, call up a variety of information (weather, nearby restaurants, airlines' travel schedule, and so on), and offer tele-assistance...