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)

Working with the ROS-VR application and interfacing with Gazebo

Let's demonstrate how to use the ROS-VR application and interface it with Gazebo. The new APK will be installed with a name such as ROSSerial.

Before starting the app, we need to set up a few steps on the ROS PC. Let's follow these steps:

  1. First, set the ROS_IP variable in the ~/.bashrc file. Execute the ifconfig command and retrieve the Wi-Fi IP address of the PC, as shown here:
PC Wi-Fi adapter IP address
  1. For this project, the IP address was 192.168.1.101, so we have to set the ROS_IP variable as the current IP in ~/.bashrc. You can simply copy the following line to the ~/.bashrc file:
$ export ROS_IP=192.168.1.101

We need to set this; only then will the Android VR app work.

  1. Now start the roscore command on the ROS PC:
$ roscore
  1. The next step is to open the Android app, and you will get a window...