ROS by Example For ROS Indigo. Do-It-Yourself Guide to the Robot Operating System. Volume 1

280 Pages·10.495 MB·English

by  Patrick Goebel (сост).

ROS By Example
A Do-It-Yourself Guide to the
Robot Operating System
V 1
OLUME
A P R P
I OBOT RODUCTION
R. P G
ATRICK OEBEL
Version 1.1.0
For ROS Indigo

ROS BY EXAMPLE. Copyright © 2012 by R. Patrick Goebel
All Rights Reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any
information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the
copyright owner and the publisher.
ISBN: 5-800085-311092
Version 1.1.0 for ROS Indigo: January 2015
LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO group which does not sponsor, authorize, or
endorse this book.
Other products and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a
trademark name, we are using the names only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit
of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark.
Information contained in this work (Paperback or eBook) has been obtained from
sources believed to be reliable. However, the author does not guarantee the accuracy or
completeness of any information contained in it, and the author shall not be responsible
for any errors, omissions, losses, or damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or
indirectly by the information published herein. This work is published with the
understanding that the author is supplying information but is not attempting to render
professional services. This product almost certainly contains errors. It is your
responsibility to examine, verify, test, and determine the appropriateness of use, or
request the assistance of an appropriate professional to do so.

P
REFACE
This book is about programming your robot to do amazing things, whether it be
detecting people's faces and other visual objects, navigating autonomously around your
house, or responding to spoken commands. We will be using some of the most
advanced robotics software available today thanks to ROS, the Robot Operating System
created by California-based Willow Garage and now maintained by the Open Source
Robotics Foundation (OSRF).
The primary goal of ROS (pronounced "Ross") is to provide a unified and open source
programming framework for controlling robots in a variety of real world and simulated
environments. ROS is certainly not the first such effort; in fact, doing a Wikipedia
search for "robot software" turns up 15 such projects. But Willow Garage is no ordinary
group of programmers banging out free software. Propelled by some serious funding,
strong technical expertise, and a well planned series of developmental milestones,
Willow Garage has ignited a kind of programming fever among roboticists with
hundreds of user-contributed ROS packages already created in just a few short years.
ROS now includes software for tasks ranging from navigation and localization (SLAM),
3D object recognition, action planning, motion control for multi-jointed arms, machine
learning and even playing billiards.
In the meantime, Willow Garage has also designed and manufactured a $400,000 robot
called the PR2 to help showcase its operating system. Using the latest in robot
hardware, including two stereo cameras, a pair of laser scanners, arms with 7 degrees of
freedom, and an omni-directional drive system, only a lucky few will be able to run
ROS directly on the PR2, including 11 research institutions that were awarded free PR2s
as part of a beta-test contest. However, you do not need a PR2 to leverage the power of
ROS; packages have already been created to support lower-cost platforms and
components including the iRobot Create, TurtleBot, Arduino, WowWee Rovio, LEGO®
NXT, Phidgets, ArbotiX, Serializer, Element and Robotis Dynamixels.
The guiding principle underlying ROS is "don't reinvent the wheel". Many thousands of
very smart people have been programming robots for over fifty years—why not bring all
that brain power together in one place? Fortunately, the Web is the perfect medium for
sharing code. Many universities, companies and individuals now openly share their
ROS code repositories, and with free cloud space available through services such as
Google Code or GitHub, anyone can share their own ROS creations easily and at no
cost.
Perhaps the best part of jumping on the ROS train is the excitement that comes from
working with thousands of like-minded roboticists from around the world. Not only will
you save many days of frustration by not duplicating someone else's work, you can also
feel the satisfaction that comes from contributing back to this rapidly developing field.

P PDF V B
RINTED VS ERSIONS OF THE OOK
The printed and PDF versions of this book are nearly the same with a few important
differences. The page formatting is identical but most PDF readers start page numbering
from the first page and ignore what is set by the document itself. Images and code
syntax are in color in the PDF version but grayscale in the printed version to keep the
cost reasonable. The PDF version is full of clickable links to other resources on the
Web. In the printed version, these links appear as underlined text with a numbered
superscript. The expanded URLs are then listed as endnotes at the end of the book.
Staying Up-To-Date: If you'd like to receive notifications of updates to both the book
and the accompanying code, please join the ros-by-example Google Group.