Effective Robotics Programming with ROS, 3rd Edition

Find out everything you need to know to build powerful robots with the most up-to-date ROS

About This Book

• This comprehensive, yet easy-to-follow guide will help you find your way through the ROS framework
• Successfully design and simulate your 3D robot model and use powerful robotics algorithms and tools to program and set up your robots with an unparalleled experience by using the exciting new features from Robot Kinetic
• Use the latest version of gazebo simulator, OpenCV 3.0, and C++11 standard for your own algorithms

Who This Book Is For

This book is suitable for an ROS beginner as well as an experienced ROS roboticist or ROS user or developer who is curious to learn ROS Kinetic and its features to make an autonomous Robot. The book is also suitable for those who want to integrate sensors and embedded systems with other software and tools using ROS as a framework.

What You Will Learn

• Understand the concepts of ROS, the command-line tools, visualization GUIs, and how to debug ROS
• Connect robot sensors and actuators to ROS
• Obtain and analyze data from cameras and 3D sensors
• Use Gazebo for robot/sensor and environment simulation
• Design a robot and see how to make it map the environment, navigate autonomously, and manipulate objects in the environment using MoveIt!
• Add vision capabilities to the robot using OpenCV 3.0
• Add 3D perception capabilities to the robot using the latest version of PCL

In Detail

Building and programming a robot can be cumbersome and time-consuming, but not when you have the right collection of tools, libraries, and more importantly expert collaboration. ROS enables collaborative software development and offers an unmatched simulated environment that simplifies the entire robot building process.

This book is packed with hands-on examples that will help you program your robot and give you complete solutions using open source ROS libraries and tools. It also shows you how to use virtual machines and Docker containers to simplify the installation of Ubuntu and the ROS framework, so you can start working in an isolated and control environment without changing your regular computer setup.

It starts with the installation and basic concepts, then continues with more complex modules available in ROS such as sensors and actuators integration (drivers), navigation and mapping (so you can create an autonomous mobile robot), manipulation, Computer Vision, perception in 3D with PCL, and more. By the end of the book, you’ll be able to leverage all the ROS Kinetic features to build a fully fledged robot for all your needs.

Style and approach

This book is packed with hands-on examples that will help you program your robot and give you complete solutions using ROS open source libraries and tools. All the robotics concepts and modules are explained and multiple examples are provided so that you can understand them easily.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Getting Started with ROS
Chapter 2. ROS Architecture and Concepts
Chapter 3. Visualization and Debugging Tools
Chapter 4. 3D Modeling and Simulation
Chapter 5. The Navigation Stack – Robot Setups
Chapter 6. The Navigation Stack – Beyond Setups
Chapter 7. Manipulation with MoveIt!
Chapter 8. Using Sensors and Actuators with ROS
Chapter 9. Computer Vision
Chapter 10. Point Clouds