Book Image

Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming, Third edition - Third Edition

By : Lentin Joseph, Jonathan Cacace
Book Image

Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming, Third edition - Third Edition

By: Lentin Joseph, Jonathan Cacace

Overview of this book

The Robot Operating System (ROS) is a software framework used for programming complex robots. ROS enables you to develop software for building complex robots without writing code from scratch, saving valuable development time. Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming provides complete coverage of the advanced concepts using easy-to-understand, practical examples and step-by-step explanations of essential concepts that you can apply to your ROS robotics projects. The book begins by helping you get to grips with the basic concepts necessary for programming robots with ROS. You'll then discover how to develop a robot simulation, as well as an actual robot, and understand how to apply high-level capabilities such as navigation and manipulation from scratch. As you advance, you'll learn how to create ROS controllers and plugins and explore ROS's industrial applications and how it interacts with aerial robots. Finally, you'll discover best practices and methods for working with ROS efficiently. By the end of this ROS book, you'll have learned how to create various applications in ROS and build your first ROS robot.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
1
Section 1 – ROS Programming Essentials
4
Section 2 – ROS Robot Simulation
11
Section 3 – ROS Robot Hardware Prototyping
15
Section 4 – Advanced ROS Programming

Creating the MoveIt IKFast plugin

Creating a MoveIt IKFast plugin is quite easy. There is no need to write code; everything can be generated using some tools. The only thing we need to do is to create an empty ROS package. The following is the procedure to create a plugin:

  1. Create an empty package in which the name should contain the robot name and model number. This package is going to convert into the final plugin package, using the plugin generation tool:
    catkin_create_pkg abb_irb6640_moveit_plugins
  2. Then, build the workspace by using the catkin_make command.
  3. After building the workspace, copy ikfast.h to abb_irb6640_moveit_plugins/include.
  4. Copy the switch ikfast61.cpp, previously created in the package folder, renaming it abb_irb6640_manipulator_ikfast_solver.cpp. This filename consists of the robot's name, model number, type of robot, and so on. This kind of naming is necessary for the generating tool.

After performing these steps, open two terminals...