Table Of ContentMastering ROS for Robotics
Programming
Design, build, and simulate complex robots using
Robot Operating System and master its out-of-the-box
functionalities
Lentin Joseph
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming
Copyright © 2015 Packt Publishing
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First published: December 2015
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Credits
Author Project Coordinator
Lentin Joseph Harshal Ved
Reviewers Proofreader
Jonathan Cacace Safis Editing
Ruixiang Du
Indexer
Tejal Daruwale Soni
Acquisition Editor
Vivek Anantharaman
Production Coordinator
Melwyn D'sa
Content Development Editor
Athira Laji
Cover Work
Melwyn D'sa
Technical Editor
Ryan Kochery
Copy Editor
Merilyn Pereira
Alpha Singh
About the Author
Lentin Joseph is an author, entrepreneur, electronics engineer, robotics enthusiast,
machine vision expert, embedded programmer, and the founder and CEO of Qbotics
Labs (http://www.qboticslabs.com) from India. He completed his bachelor's degree
in electronics and communication engineering at the Federal Institute of Science
and Technology (FISAT), Kerala. For his final year engineering project, he made a
social robot that can interact with people. The project was a huge success and was
mentioned in many forms of visual and print media. The main features of this robot
were that it can communicate with people and reply intelligently and has some image
processing capabilities such as face, motion, and color detection. The entire project was
implemented using the Python programming language. His interest in robotics, image
processing, and Python started with that project.
After his graduation, for 3 years he worked in a start-up company focusing on robotics
and image processing. In the meantime, he learned famous robotic software platforms
such as Robot Operating System (ROS), V-REP, Actin (a robotic simulation tool), and
image processing libraries such as OpenCV, OpenNI, and PCL. He also knows robot
3D designing and embedded programming on Arduino and Tiva Launchpad.
After 3 years of work experience, he started a new company called Qbotics
Labs, which mainly focuses on research to build up some great products in
domains such as robotics and machine vision. He maintains a personal website
(http://www.lentinjoseph.com) and a technology blog called technolabsz
(http://www.technolabsz.com). He publishes his works on his tech blog.
He was also a speaker at PyCon2013, India, on the topic Learning Robotics
using Python.
Lentin is the author of the book Learning Robotics Using Python (refer to http://
learn-robotics.com to know more) by Packt Publishing. The book was about
building an autonomous mobile robot using ROS and OpenCV. The book was
launched in ICRA 2015 and was featured in the ROS blog, Robohub, OpenCV,
the Python website, and various other such forums.
Lentin was a finalist in the ICRA 2015 challenge, HRATC
(http://www2.isr.uc.pt/~embedded/events/HRATC2015/Welcome.html).
I dedicate this book to my parents because they gave me the
inspiration to write this book. I also convey my regards to my friends
who helped and inspired me to write this book.
About the Reviewers
Jonathan Cacace was born in Naples, Italy, on December 13, 1987. He received has
a bachelor's and master's degree in computer science from the University of Naples
Federico II. Currently, he is attending a PhD Scholar Course in Information and
Automation Engineering at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information
Technology (DIETI) in the same institution. His research is focused on autonomous
action planning and execution by mobile robots, high-level and low-level control
of UAV platforms, and human-robot interaction with humanoid robots in service
task execution. He is the author and coauthor of several scientific publications in the
robotics field, published at international conferences and scientific journals.
Jonathan is a member of the PRISMA Laboratory (http://prisma.dieti.unina.
it/) of the University of Naples Federico II. With his research group, he is involved
in different EU-funded collaborative research projects focused on several topics, such
as the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for search and rescue operations or service
task execution (http://www.sherpa-project.eu/sherpa/ and http://www.arcas-
project.eu/) and the dynamic manipulation of elastic objects using humanoid robotic
platforms (http://www.rodyman.eu/).
Ruixiang Du is currently a PhD student studying Robotics at Worcester Polytechnic
Institute (WPI). He received his bachelor's degree in Automation from North China
Electric Power University in 2011 and a master's degree in Robotics Engineering from
WPI in 2013.
Ruixiang has worked on various robotic projects with robot platforms ranging from
medical robots, UAV/UGV, to humanoid robots. He was an active member of Team
WPI-CMU for the DARPA Robotics Challenge.
Ruixiang has general interests in robotics and in real-time and embedded systems.
His research focus is on the control and motion planning of mobile robots in
cluttered and dynamic environments.
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Table of Contents
Preface xi
Chapter 1: Introduction to ROS and Its Package Management 1
Why should we learn ROS? 2
Why we prefer ROS for robots 2
Why some do not prefer ROS for robots 4
Understanding the ROS file system level 5
ROS packages 7
ROS meta packages 9
ROS messages 10
The ROS services 12
Understanding the ROS computation graph level 12
Understanding ROS nodes 15
ROS messages 16
ROS topics 16
ROS services 17
ROS bags 18
Understanding ROS Master 19
Using the ROS parameter 20
Understanding ROS community level 22
What are the prerequisites to start with ROS? 22
Running ROS Master and ROS parameter server 23
Checking the roscore command output 25
Creating a ROS package 26
Working with ROS topics 28
Creating ROS nodes 28
Building the nodes 32
Adding custom msg and srv files 34
Working with ROS services 37
Working with ROS actionlib 42
[ i ]
