Book Image

ROS Robotics By Example, Second Edition - Second Edition

By : Carol Fairchild, Lentin Joseph, Dr. Thomas L. Harman
Book Image

ROS Robotics By Example, Second Edition - Second Edition

By: Carol Fairchild, Lentin Joseph, Dr. Thomas L. Harman

Overview of this book

ROS is a robust robotics framework that works regardless of hardware architecture or hardware origin. It standardizes most layers of robotics functionality from device drivers to process control and message passing to software package management. But apart from just plain functionality, ROS is a great platform to learn about robotics itself and to simulate, as well as actually build, your first robots. This does not mean that ROS is a platform for students and other beginners; on the contrary, ROS is used all over the robotics industry to implement flying, walking and diving robots, yet implementation is always straightforward, and never dependent on the hardware itself. ROS Robotics has been the standard introduction to ROS for potential professionals and hobbyists alike since the original edition came out; the second edition adds a gradual introduction to all the goodness available with the Kinetic Kame release. By providing you with step-by-step examples including manipulator arms and flying robots, the authors introduce you to the new features. The book is intensely practical, with space given to theory only when absolutely necessary. By the end of this book, you will have hands-on experience on controlling robots with the best possible framework.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
ROS Robotics By Example Second Edition
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
Index

Building a differential drive robot URDF


URDF is an XML format specifically defined to represent robot models down to their component level. These URDF files can become long and cumbersome on complex robot systems. XML Macros (Xacro) is an XML macro language created to make these robot description files easier to read and maintain. Xacro helps you reduce the duplication of information within the file.

For our first robot model, we will build a URDF file for a two-wheeled differential drive robot. The model will be created incrementally, and we will view the results at each step in rviz. When our simple two-wheeled robot is complete, we will add Gazebo formatting and view the model in Gazebo. In Chapter 5, Creating Your First Robot Arm (in Simulation), we will expand our knowledge of URDF files and build a simple robot arm model using the Xacro notation.

Note

Downloading the ros_robotics code

You can download the example code files and other support material for this book from the Packt Publishing...