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)

Getting started with Alexa and connecting with ROS

Before I tell you about Alexa, go to https://echosim.io/welcome, log in with your Amazon account if you have one, or create an account. Once you're done setting up the account, ask the following questions and find out the following about the replies you get:

  • What is Alexa?
  • How is it useful?

Fascinating? I'm sure it might be for those who are new to Alexa but, on the other hand, it might seem pretty common as you would've seen something similar with other voice services such as OK Google or Hey Siri.

Alexa is an intelligent cloud-based voice service from Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/). It is available as a voice service API as well with Amazon certified devices such as those found https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Echo-And-Alexa-Devices/b?ie=UTF8&node=9818047011, which help people interact with the technology...