Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming

Design, build and simulate complex robots using Robot Operating System and master its out-of-the-box functionalities

Key Features

• Develop complex robotic applications using ROS for interfacing robot manipulators and mobile robots with the help of high end robotic sensors
• Gain insights into autonomous navigation in mobile robot and motion planning in robot manipulators
• Discover the best practices and troubleshooting solutions everyone needs when working on ROS

Book Description

The area of robotics is gaining huge momentum among corporate people, researchers, hobbyists, and students. The major challenge in robotics is its controlling software. The Robot Operating System (ROS) is a modular software platform to develop generic robotic applications.

This book discusses the advanced concepts in robotics and how to program using ROS. It starts with deep overview of the ROS framework, which will give you a clear idea of how ROS really works. During the course of the book, you will learn how to build models of complex robots, and simulate and interface the robot using the ROS MoveIt motion planning library and ROS navigation stacks.

After discussing robot manipulation and navigation in robots, you will get to grips with the interfacing I/O boards, sensors, and actuators of ROS. One of the essential ingredients of robots are vision sensors, and an entire chapter is dedicated to the vision sensor, its interfacing in ROS, and its programming.

You will discuss the hardware interfacing and simulation of complex robot to ROS and ROS Industrial (Package used for interfacing industrial robots).

Finally, you will get to know the best practices to follow when programming using ROS.

What you will learn

• Create a robot model of a Seven-DOF robotic arm and a differential wheeled mobile robot
• Work with motion planning of a Seven-DOF arm using MoveIt!
• Implement autonomous navigation in differential drive robots using SLAM and AMCL packages in ROS
• Dig deep into the ROS Pluginlib, ROS nodelets, and Gazebo plugins
• Interface I/O boards such as Arduino, Robot sensors, and High end actuators with ROS
• Simulation and motion planning of ABB and Universal arm using ROS Industrial
• Explore the ROS framework using its latest version

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to ROS and Its Package Management
2. Working with 3D Robot Modeling in ROS
3. Simulating Robots Using ROS and Gazebo
4. Using the ROS MoveIt! and Navigation Stack
5. Working with Pluginlib, Nodelets, and Gazebo Plugins
6. Writing ROS Controllers and Visualization Plugins
7. Interfacing I/O Boards, Sensors, and Actuators to ROS
8. Programming Vision Sensors using ROS, Open-CV, and PCL
9. Building and Interfacing Differential Drive Mobile Robot Hardware in ROS
10. Exploring the Advanced Capabilities of ROS-MoveIt!
11. ROS for Industrial Robots
12. Troubleshooting and Best Practices in ROS

Lentin Joseph

Lentin Joseph is an author, entrepreneur, electronics engineer, robotics enthusiast, machine vision expert, embedded programmer, and the founder and CEO of Qbotics Labs 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 (lentinjoseph) and a technology blog called technolabsz (technolabsz). 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 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.