ROS Programming: Building Powerful Robots: Design, build and simulate complex robots using the Robot Operating System

by Anil Mahtani, Luis Sanchez, Enrique Fernandez, Aaron Martinez, Lentin Joseph

Overview

Enhancing your existing robotic skills by learning how to design and build multifunctional robots using Robots Operating System libraries and tools

About This Book

• Successfully design and simulate your 3D robot model and use powerful algorithms and tools to program and set up your robots
• Work through concrete examples that will help you build your own robotic systems of varying complexity levels
• Discover the best practices and troubleshooting solutions everyone needs when working on ROS

Who This Book Is For

This course targets robotic enthusiasts, developers, and researchers who would like to build robot applications using ROS. If you are looking to explore the advanced ROS features in your projects, then this learning path is for you. Basic knowledge of ROS, GNU/Linux, and programming concepts is assumed.

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
• 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
• Get to grips with teleoperating robots using hand gestures
• Build ROS-based applications using Matlab and Android
• Build interactive applications using TurtleBot

In Detail

This learning path is designed to help you program and build your robots using open source ROS libraries and tools. We start with the installation and basic concepts, then continue with the more complex modules available in ROS, such as sensor and actuator integration (drivers), navigation and mapping (so you can create an autonomous mobile robot), manipulation, computer vision, perception in 3D with PCL, and more.

We then discuss advanced concepts in robotics and how to program using ROS.

You'll get a 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.

We'll go through great projects such as building a self-driving car, an autonomous mobile robot, and image recognition using deep learning and ROS. You can find beginner, intermediate, and expert ROS robotics applications inside!

It includes content from the following Packt products:

• Effective Robotics Programming with ROS - Third Edition
• Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming
• ROS Robotics Projects

Style and approach

This course is packed with fun-filled, end-to-end projects on mobile, armed, and flying robots, and describes the ROS implementation and execution of these models.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781788623650
Publisher:	Packt Publishing
Publication date:	03/13/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	1396
File size:	121 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Anil Mahtani is a computer scientist who has dedicated an important part of his career to underwater robotics. He first started working in the field with his master thesis, where he developed a software architecture for a low-cost ROV. During the development of his thesis, he also became the team leader and lead developer of AVORA, a team of university students that designed and developed an autonomous underwater vehicle for the Students Autonomous Underwater Challenge – Europe (SAUC-E) in 2012. That same year, Anil Mahtani completed his thesis and his MSc in Computer Science at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and then became a Software Engineer at SeeByte Ltd, a world leader in smart software solutions for underwater systems. In 2015, he joined Dell SecureWorks as a Software Engineer, where he applies his knowledge and skills toward developing intrusion detection and prevention systems. During his time at SeeByte Ltd, Anil Mahtani played a key role in the development of several semi-autonomous and autonomous underwater systems for the military and oil and gas industries. In those projects, he was heavily involved in the development of autonomy systems, the design of distributed software architectures, and low-level software development and also contributed in providing Computer Vision solutions for front-looking sonar imagery. At SeeByte Ltd, he also achieved the position of project manager, managing a team of engineers developing and maintaining the internal core C++ libraries. His professional interests lie mainly in software engineering, algorithms, data structures, distributed systems, networks, and operating systems. Anil's main role in robotics is to provide efficient and robust software solutions, addressing not only the current problems at hand but also foreseeing future problems or possible enhancements. Given his experience, he is also an asset when dealing with Computer Vision, machine learning, or control problems. Anil has also interests in DIY and electronics, and he has developed several Arduino libraries, which he has contributed back to the community.
Luis Sanchez completed his dual master's degree in electronics and telecommunication engineering at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. He has collaborated with different research groups as the Institute for Technological Development and Innovation (IDETIC), the Oceanic Platform of Canary Islands (PLOCAN), and the Institute of Applied Microelectronics (IUMA) where he actually researches imaging super-resolution algorithms. His professional interests lie in Computer Vision, signal processing, and electronic design applied on robotics systems. For this reason, he joined the AVORA team, a group of young engineers and students working on the development of Underwater Autonomous Vehicles (AUV) from scratch. In this project, Luis has started developing acoustic and Computer Vision systems, extracting information from different sensors such as hydrophones, sonar, or camera. With a strong background gained in marine technology, Luis cofounded Subsea Mechatronics, a young start-up, where he works on developing remotely operated and autonomous vehicles for underwater environments. Here's what Dario Sosa Cabrera, a marine technologies engineer, and entrepreneur (and the co-founder and maker of LPA Fabrika: Gran Canaria Maker Space) has to say about Luis: ""He is very enthusiastic and an engineer in multiple disciplines. He is responsible for his work. He can manage himself and can take up responsibilities as a team leader, as demonstrated at the euRathlon competition. His background in electronics and telecommunications allows him to cover a wide range of expertise from signal processing and software, to electronic design and fabrication."" Luis has participated as a technical reviewer of the previous version of Learning ROS for Robotics Programming and as a co-writer of the second edition.
Enrique Fernandez has a PhD in computer engineering and an extensive background in robotics. His PhD thesis addressed the problem of Path Planning for Autonomous Underwater Gliders, but he also worked on other robotics projects, including SLAM, perception, vision, and control. During his doctorate, he joined the Center of Underwater Robotics Research in the University of Girona, where he developed Visual SLAM and INS modules in ROS for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), and participated in the Student Autonomous Underwater Challenge, Europe (SAUC-E) in 2012, and collaborated in the 2013 edition; in 2012, he was awarded a prize. During his Ph.D., Enrique published several conference papers and publications to top robotics conferences, such as the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). He has also authored some book chapters and ROS books. Later, Enrique joined PAL Robotics as a SLAM engineer in June 2013. There he worked with the REEM and REEM-C humanoid robots using ROS software and also contributed to the open source community, mainly to ROS Control repository, being one of the maintainers nowadays. In 2015, he joined Clearpath Robotics to work on the Autonomy team, developing perception algorithms. He has worked on the software that runs on the industrial mobile robots OTTO 1500 and OTTO 100, which has been deployed into the facilities of multiple large industrial companies, such as General Electric and John Deere.
Aaron Martinez is a computer engineer, entrepreneur, and expert in digital fabrication. He completed his master's thesis in 2010 at the IUCTC (Instituto Universitario de Ciencias y Tecnologias Ciberneticas) at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. He prepared his master's thesis in the field of telepresence using immersive devices and robotic platforms. After completing his academic career, he attended an internship program at The Institute for Robotics in the Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. During his internship program, he worked as part of a development team of a mobile platform using ROS and the navigation stack. After that, he was involved in some projects related to robotics; one of them is the AVORA project in the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. In this project, he worked on the creation of an AUV to participate in the Student Autonomous Underwater Challenge-Europe (SAUC-E) in Italy. In 2012, he was responsible for manufacturing this project; in 2013, he helped to adapt the navigation stack and other algorithms from ROS to the robotic platform. Recently, Aaron created his own company named SubSeaMechatronics, SL. This company works with projects related with underwater robotics and telecontrol systems. They also design and manufacture subsea sensors. The company manufactures devices for other companies and research and development institutes. Aaron has experience in many fields, such as programming, robotics, mechatronics, and digital fabrication as well as many devices, such as Arduino, BeagleBone, Servers, and LIDAR, and nowadays he designs robotics platforms for underwater and aerial environments.
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 could communicate with people and reply intelligently and had 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, he worked for three years at a start-up company focusing on robotics and image processing. In the meantime, he learned to work with famous robotics software platforms such as Robot Operating System (ROS), V-REP, and Actin (a robotic simulation tool) and image processing libraries such as OpenCV, OpenNI, and PCL. He also knows about 3D robot design and embedded programming on Arduino and Tiva Launchpad. After three years of work experience, he started a new company called Qbotics Labs, which mainly focuses on research into building some great products in domains such as robotics and machine vision. He maintains a personal website and a technology blog called 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 books Learning Robotics Using Python and Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming both by Packt Publishing. The first book was about building an autonomous mobile robot using ROS and OpenCV. This book was launched at ICRA 2015 and was featured on the ROS blog, Robohub, OpenCV, the Python website, and various other such forums. The second book is on mastering Robot Operating System, which was also launched at ICRA 2016, and is one of the bestselling books on ROS. Lentin and his team were also winners of the HRATC 2016 challenge conducted as a part of ICRA 2016. He was also a finalist in the ICRA 2015 challenge, HRATC