ROS Robotics By Example

Bring life to your robot using ROS robotic applications

About This Book

• This book will help you boost your knowledge of ROS and give you advanced practical experience you can apply to your ROS robot platforms
• This is the only book that offers you step-by-step instructions to solidify your ROS understanding and gain experience using ROS tools
• From eminent authors, this book offers you a plethora of fun-filled examples to make your own quadcopter, turtlebot, and two-armed robots

Who This Book Is For

If you are a robotics developer, whether a hobbyist, researcherm or professional, and are interested in learning about ROS through a hands-on approach, then this book is for you. You are encouraged to have a working knowledge of GNU/Linux systems and Python.

What You Will Learn

• Get to know the fundamentals of ROS and apply its concepts to real robot examples
• Control a mobile robot to navigate autonomously in an environment
• Model your robot designs using URDF and Xacro, and operate them in a ROS Gazebo simulation
• Control a 7 degree-of-freedom robot arm for visual servoing
• Fly a quadcopter to autonomous waypoints
• Gain working knowledge of ROS tools such as Gazebo, rviz, rqt, and Move-It
• Control robots with mobile devices and controller boards
• Combine robots to accomplish a cooperative mission

In Detail

The visionaries who created ROS developed a framework for robotics centered on the commonality of robotic systems and exploited this commonality in ROS to expedite the development of future robotic systems.

From the fundamental concepts to advanced practical experience, this book will provide you with an incremental knowledge of the ROS framework, the backbone of the robotics evolution. ROS standardizes many layers of robotics functionality from low-level device drivers to process control to message passing to software package management. This book provides step-by-step examples of mobile, armed, and flying robots, describing the ROS implementation as the basic model for other robots of these types. By controlling these robots, whether in simulation or in reality, you will use ROS to drive, move, and fly robots using ROS control.

Carol Fairchild is the owner and principal engineer of Fairchild Robotics, a robotics development and integration company. She is a researcher at Baxter's Lab at the University of Houston-Clear Lake (UHCL) and a member of the adjunct faculty. Her research involves the use of Baxter for expanded applications. Ms. Fairchild has been involved in many aspects of robotics from her earliest days of building her first robot, a Heathkit Hero. She has an MS in computer engineering from UHCL and a BS in engineering technology from Texas A&M. Ms. Fairchild has taught middle-school robotics, coached FLL, and volunteered for FIRST Robotics in Houston.