Book Image

ROS Robotics Projects - Second Edition

By : Ramkumar Gandhinathan
Book Image

ROS Robotics Projects - Second Edition

By: Ramkumar Gandhinathan

Overview of this book

Nowadays, heavy industrial robots placed in workcells are being replaced by new age robots called cobots, which don't need workcells. They are used in manufacturing, retail, banks, energy, and healthcare, among other domains. One of the major reasons for this rapid growth in the robotics market is the introduction of an open source robotics framework called the Robot Operating System (ROS). This book covers projects in the latest ROS distribution, ROS Melodic Morenia with Ubuntu Bionic (18.04). Starting with the fundamentals, this updated edition of ROS Robotics Projects introduces you to ROS-2 and helps you understand how it is different from ROS-1. You'll be able to model and build an industrial mobile manipulator in ROS and simulate it in Gazebo 9. You'll then gain insights into handling complex robot applications using state machines and working with multiple robots at a time. This ROS book also introduces you to new and popular hardware such as Nvidia's Jetson Nano, Asus Tinker Board, and Beaglebone Black, and allows you to explore interfacing with ROS. You'll learn as you build interesting ROS projects such as self-driving cars, making use of deep learning, reinforcement learning, and other key AI concepts. By the end of the book, you'll have gained the confidence to build interesting and intricate projects with ROS.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Summary

In this chapter, we saw the differences between a microcontroller, a microprocessor, and a single-board computer. After understanding their differences, we looked at the boards that are commonly used by the robotics community. Also, we covered how to use such boards with ROS and take control of their GPIOs to control external peripherals such as motors or sensors. We looked at different types of GPU boards that have a good advantage over normal SBCs. To select a suitable embedded board for any application, it's suggested that you try out benchmarking, where we can choose boards based on test results. We also learned how to create a skill with Alexa and connect it with ROS. This chapter helped us to install ROS and exploit its hardware capabilities for robot applications.

In the next chapter, we will learn how to provide intelligence to our robot through a well-known...