Table Of ContentROS Robotics Projects
Second Edition
Build and control robots powered by the Robot Operating
System, machine learning, and virtual reality
Ramkumar Gandhinathan
Lentin Joseph
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
ROS Robotics Projects
Second Edition
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First published: March 2017
Second edition: December 2019
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ISBN 978-1-83864-932-6
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To my dear mother and father, for their sacrifices and for exemplifying the power of
determination.
To my influential sister, for her constant love and motivation.
To my loving wife, for being supportive, understanding my passion, and accepting me the way I
am throughout our life and beyond.
To all my friends and colleagues who've been by my side, encouraging and inspiring me to do
more.
To Meeta, Pratik, and other Packt employees for working closely with me, bringing the best out
of me, and shaping the book.
– Ramkumar Gandhinathan
I dedicate this book to my parents, C. G. Joseph and Jancy Joseph, for giving me strong support
in making this project happen.
– Lentin Joseph
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Contributors
About the authors
Ramkumar Gandhinathan is a roboticist and researcher by profession. He started building
robots in the sixth grade and has been in the robotics field for over 15 years through
personal and professional connections. He has personally built over 80 robots of different
types. With 7 years' overall professional experience (4 years full-time and 3 years part-
time/internship) in the robotics industry, he has 5 years of ROS experience. As a part of his
professional career, he has built over 15 industrial robot solutions using ROS. He is also
fascinated by building drones and is a drone pilot. His research interests and passion are in
the fields of SLAM, motion planning, sensor fusion, multi-robot communication, and
systems integration.
Lentin Joseph is an author, roboticist, and robotics entrepreneur from India. He runs a
robotics software company called Qbotics Labs in Kochi, Kerala. He has 8 years of
experience in the robotics domain, primarily in ROS, OpenCV, and PCL.
He has authored several books on ROS, namely Learning Robotics Using Python, first and
second edition; Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming, first and second edition; ROS
Robotics Projects, first edition; and Robot Operating System for Absolute Beginners.
He completed his master's degree in robotics and automation in India and has worked at
Robotics Institute, CMU, USA. He is also a TEDx speaker.
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Getting Started with ROS 7
Technical requirements 8
Getting started with ROS 8
ROS distributions 9
Supported OSes 10
Robots and sensors supported by ROS 11
Why use ROS? 13
Fundamentals of ROS 14
The filesystem level 15
The computation graph level 16
The ROS community level 18
Communication in ROS 19
ROS client libraries 20
ROS tools 21
ROS Visualizer (RViz) 21
rqt_plot 22
rqt_graph 23
ROS simulators 24
Installing ROS Melodic on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 25
Getting started with the installation 26
Configuring Ubuntu repositories 26
Setting up source.list 28
Setting up keys 29
Installing ROS Melodic 29
Initializing rosdep 29
Setting up the ROS environment 30
Getting rosinstall 30
Setting up ROS on VirtualBox 31
Introduction to Docker 33
Why Docker? 34
Installing Docker 35
Installing from the Ubuntu repository 35
Removing Docker 35
Installing from the Docker repository 36
Working with Docker 37
Setting up the ROS workspace 39
Opportunities for ROS in industries and research 41
Summary 41
Table of Contents
Chapter 2: Introduction to ROS-2 and Its Capabilities 42
Technical requirements 44
Getting started with ROS-2 44
ROS-2 distributions 46
Supported operating systems 46
Robots and sensors supported in ROS-2 47
Why ROS-2? 47
Fundamentals of ROS-2 48
What is DDS? 49
How is DDS implemented? 49
Computational graph 50
ROS-2 community level 50
Communication in ROS-2 51
Changes between ROS-1 and ROS-2 52
ROS-2 client libraries (RCL) 53
ROS-2 tools 54
Rviz2 55
Rqt 56
Installing ROS-2 57
Getting started with the installation 57
Setting up the system locale 57
Adding ROS-2 repositories 58
Installing development and ROS tools 59
Getting the ROS-2 source code 59
Installing dependencies using rosdep 60
Installing DDS implementations (optional) 61
Building code 62
Setting up ROS-1, ROS-2, or both environments 63
Running test nodes 65
Setting up the ROS-2 workspace 67
Writing ROS-2 nodes 68
ROS-1 example code 69
ROS-2 example code 70
Differences between ROS-1 and ROS-2 talker nodes 74
Bridging ROS-1 and ROS-2 75
Testing the ros1_bridge package 76
Summary 78
Chapter 3: Building an Industrial Mobile Manipulator 79
Technical requirements 80
Understanding available mobile manipulators 81
Applications of mobile manipulators 83
Getting started building mobile manipulators 84
Units and coordinate system 85
Gazebo and ROS assumptions 85
[ ii ]
Table of Contents
Building the robot base 87
Robot base prerequisites 87
Robot base specifications 87
Robot base kinematics 88
Software parameters 89
ROS message format 89
ROS controllers 90
Modeling the robot base 90
Initializing the workspace 92
Defining the links 93
Defining the joints 95
Simulating the robot base 96
Defining collisions 96
Defining actuators 97
Defining ROS_CONTROLLERS 98
Testing the robot base 100
Getting started building the robot arm 104
Robot arm prerequisites 104
Robot arm specifications 104
Robot arm kinematics 105
Software parameters 106
The ROS message format 106
ROS controllers 106
Modeling the robot arm 107
Initializing the workspace 107
Defining the links 108
Defining the joints 109
Simulating the robot arm 110
Defining collisions 110
Defining actuators 111
Defining ROS_CONTROLLERS 112
Testing the robot arm 113
Putting things together 115
Modeling the mobile manipulator 115
Simulating and testing the mobile manipulator 116
Summary 117
Chapter 4: Handling Complex Robot Tasks Using State Machines 118
Technical requirements 119
Introduction to ROS actions 119
The client-server concept 120
An actionlib example – robot arm client 121
An actionlib example – battery simulator server-client 124
Creating a package and a folder action inside it 125
Creating an action file that has the goal, result, and feedback 125
Modifying the package files and compiling the package 126
Defining a server 127
Defining a client 129
[ iii ]
Table of Contents
Waiter robot analogy 131
Introduction to state machines 133
Introduction to SMACH 135
SMACH concepts 135
Outcome 137
User data 137
Preemption 137
Introspection 137
Getting started with SMACH examples 139
Installing and using SMACH-ROS 139
Simple example 139
Restaurant robot analogy 143
Summary 147
Chapter 5: Building an Industrial Application 148
Technical requirements 149
Application use case – robot home delivery 149
Setting up the environment in Gazebo 152
Making our robot base intelligent 153
Adding a laser sensor 153
Configuring the navigation stack 156
Mapping the environment 158
Localizing the robot base 159
Making our robot arm intelligent 160
Introduction to Moveit 160
Installing and configuring Moveit for our mobile robot 162
Installing Moveit 162
Configuring the Moveit setup assistant wizard 162
Loading the robot model 163
Setting up self-collisions 164
Setting up planning groups 164
Setting up arm poses 165
Setting up passive joints 166
Setting up ROS controllers 167
Finalizing the Moveitconfig package 167
Controlling the robot arm using Moveit 168
Simulating the application 172
Mapping and saving the environment 172
Choosing the points on the environment 173
Adding the points to our library 174
Completing the state machine 174
Improvements to the robot 174
Summary 175
Chapter 6: Multi-Robot Collaboration 176
Technical requirements 177
[ iv ]
