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

Introducing MoveIt!


One of the challenging aspects of robotics is defining a path for the motion of a robot's arms to grasp an object, especially when obstacles may obstruct the most obvious path of motion. Fortunately, a ROS package called MoveIt! allows us to plan and execute a complicated trajectory.

A video created by Rethink Robotics shows how to use MoveIt! to plan the motion of Baxter's arms and then have MoveIt! actually cause a real or simulated Baxter to execute that motion. To see the video, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=1Zdkwym42P4.

A tutorial is available on the Rethink wiki site at http://sdk.rethinkrobotics.com/wiki/MoveIt_Tutorial.

First, start the Baxter simulator in Gazebo:

$ cd baxter_ws
$ ./baxter.sh sim
$ roslaunch baxter_gazebo baxter_world.launch

In a second terminal window, untuck Baxter's arms and start the Python script that starts joint_trajectory_action_server:

$ cd baxter_ws
$ ./baxter.sh sim
$ rosrun baxter_tools tuck_arms...